


Battle is the Great Redeemer

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Final Battle, Fix-It, Gen, Inspired by Edge of Tomorrow, Mild Smut, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-03-09 19:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 69,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Jaime Lannister dies in a tunnel under the Red Keep, and wakes up days earlier at Winterfell. And then it happens again. And again. But he's not the first to live the same battle over and over again. Arya Stark, the slayer of the Night King, went through it first in the Battle of Winterfell.Edge of TomorrowAU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the late great Bill Paxton's speech as Master Sergeant Farell: "Hope in the form of glorious combat, battle is the great redeemer, the fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Banner by [Ro Nordmann](https://ronordmann.tumblr.com/)

“Fuck,” Jaime cursed as he hit the stone floor, his hand skidding in something wet.

“You should not have returned,” Qyburn said, shaking his head as the Mountain closed the cell door.

“Talk her out of this folly, Qyburn.” It was useless, begging this man to make a rational decision. He had, after all, thought transforming a dying Gregor Clegane into a mindless killing machine was an excellent idea.

“When the last dragon falls from the sky, you will see the error of your ways, Ser Jaime. One way or another,” he said with a hint of anticipation in his voice. The bolt slid into place.

Jaime shuddered and got to his feet, wiping his filthy hand on the wall. The cell was dark, the only light coming through a narrow barred window in the door. Firelight flickered in the corridor.

“Kingslayer?” A voice rasped nearby. A dry laugh echoed in the darkness, and continued, rising until it broke off with a ragged sob.

“Quiet,” Qyburn admonished.

“Why? What more could you do to me?” The voice was Dornish. Female. Familiar.

“Ellaria?” Jaime asked, not truly expecting an answer.

A door opened nearby with a squeal of hinges.

A feral cry rose from the other cell, and footsteps burst past. The Mountain was big but he wasn’t fast. Jaime only caught a glimpse of her, lovely nut-brown skin turned ashy, filthy hair tangled and eyes hollow. And then the Mountain’s immense hand shot out and slammed her into the wall of the corridor.

Ellaria Sand’s head shattered like an egg, but Jaime could swear she was smiling.

“Pity,” Qyburn sighed. “I had plans for her.”

The Mountain’s heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor. He didn’t even take the body with him. And then they were gone, and Jaime was alone with the ghosts.

He felt around the cell gingerly with his foot and his hand, looking for somewhere to sit or lie down. The cell stank, and something foul was smeared on one wall. He’d nearly circled the room before he found a low, rough pallet. The single blanket was scratchy and stiff, and there were bugs moving on it. He tossed the blanket in the corner and sat down.

Cersei would not forget him down here. Not with her enemies laying siege to the capital. Not when she needed him. And she did. Her scorpions were impressive, but he’d spotted their biggest flaw immediately upon arriving at the city gates. They all pointed outward. If Daenerys approached from the east, high above the keep, and dove low over the city, she could attack the scorpions from behind or to the side before anyone could even attempt to reposition them.

Jaime leaned against the wall rather than lie down. The stone was cold and damp, so different from the hot-spring-heated walls of Winterfell.

He cursed himself for a fool. A week past, he’d been lying in a warm bed covered in thick furs, Brienne naked beside him.

When they were together in the firelight, his unseen chains as a highborn hostage in Lady Stark’s custody hadn’t chafed. His frustration about being left behind, hiding from battle where he’d always felt most himself, had fallen away. It was easier than he’d ever hoped, to lose himself in Brienne, to let himself learn her body as he already knew her mind. It was more than he deserved.

And it had ended. One raven had destroyed any hope Jaime had for a quick surrender or even a bloodless siege. If Cersei thought there was any chance she could win, she would fight until the bitter end. She would throw every soldier she had against Daenerys, no matter the cost, and she would die on the Iron Throne if she had to, roaring with her last breath.

Daenerys was wounded now, and any satisfaction she’d found in the victory over the Night’s King had vanished when Rhaegal plunged into the sea, when Missandei was executed in front of her. There would be no mercy, not for the woman who lied and turned her back on the world of men while Daenerys lost a dragon, half her forces, and Ser Jorah to the fight with the dead.

Jaime had resolved to go to King’s Landing, to be a voice of reason in the Red Keep. To save the last of his children, if he could, or die in the attempt. Brienne had argued with him, told him he was a good man and he couldn’t save Tyrion or Cersei from themselves. She didn’t understand, and in truth he didn’t want her to. Rivers of blood would flow down the streets of King’s Landing, fire from above and fire from below. And it all began with him.

If Brienne knew everything he’d done, would she still smile at him with such devotion? Would she give her body to him with such trust? When she told him that he was an honorable man, a good man, he felt like a fraud. She was the only true knight he’d ever known. Even the Sword of the Morning was just a man in the end.

She’d argued with him, because of course she had. If Brienne was awake, she was arguing with him. And she’d offered to come south with him if he insisted on leaving. Jaime had refused. Cersei would have thrown her in the black cells too. Or perhaps ordered the Mountain to slaughter her in front of him.

So on Jaime’s last morning in the North, when the sun began to lighten the endless sky, he had woken Brienne with a slow, sure hand and his lips on her skin. He’d loved her well and thoroughly, but in the end he insisted on going. He tried not to see the hurt in her eyes, and told himself it was enough that he vowed to come back if he had to crawl out of the grave to do it. He kissed her one last time before dressing and going to break his fast before setting out. If he’d lingered, he never would have left.

Neither he nor Brienne had asked permission for him to go south, but he’d left the castle before, hunting or scouting. No one followed his movements that closely. With luck he’d be well away before Brienne had to explain his absence.

He’d barely left Brienne’s chamber when a boy handed Jaime a message. Lord Bran wanted to see him in the godswood. The prospect of an audience with the Three-Eyed Raven turned Jaime’s stomach to stone. The boy had had need of him before the Army of the Dead was defeated. Perhaps now Jaime had outlived his usefulness.

Snow had crunched under his boots, and under that, broken arrows. Bran had been waiting by the weirwood with its ominous carved face.

“You wanted to see me?” Jaime had tried to sound unconcerned, arrogant even. He failed. The boy made him nervous.

“You’re going south.”

No point in lying. “Yes.”

“Move me over there,” Bran had ordered, just as imperious as his father, pointing to the base of the tree.

Jaime had moved to grasp the handles of the wheeled chair.

“No. Pick me up.”

Jaime hadn’t been at all sure he could lift Bran without dropping him. His golden hand looked good but couldn’t support any real weight. Bran was taller than he looked, and awkward to move about, but Jaime just managed it.

Bran had put out a hand, flat on the tree, and grabbed Jaime’s right forearm just before his eyes turned white.

Jaime blinked, and suddenly he was looking at himself from several feet away. Bran rested against the weirwood, Jaime frozen locked in his grip. A young man stood with them, one he didn’t know, clad in rags, looking thin and ill. His left hand was burning.

He looked straight at Jaime, dark circles under his eyes. When he raised his right hand, it held a burning sword. “You’ll know when it’s over.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jaime woke to the castle shaking around him, and a dragon roaring in the distance. He leapt to his feet, still groggy. Surely Cersei hadn’t left him down here.

The castle shook again, and pebbles dropped from the ceiling above him. Was Daenerys attacking the keep? She must be. Jon Snow’s armies had no siege engines, no trebuchets. Drogon could lay waste to the keep, dashing its towers into the sea, or simply melt the red stone into slag as Balerion had done at Harrenhal. Forty years to build, and a day to ruin.

A crack appeared in the wall behind Jaime, and the floor shook ominously.

Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that she’d left him here. Last night, Cersei had barely spared him a glance when her guards threw him to the floor of the map room. “Ser Gregor, take my brother to the black cells. I’ve no time for deserters and betrayers tonight,” she’d said, lovely and utterly remote in rich red velvet, a goblet of wine in her hand.

He might have still been in Winterfell for all that she noticed him after that. Her commanders circled her, giving her updates and battle plans, while she smiled and contemplated her glorious victory.

Qyburn had accompanied them, Jaime’s good arm wrenched behind him as he was dragged down to the dungeons. Qyburn wanted to know everything Jaime knew about the allied forces outside the gates. Jaime knew what he would have done with the men and resources left to the dragon queen, but he wasn’t about to share that. Nor would he share how to defend against them. Jaime only told the man one thing, that Drogon was Balerion the Black Dread come again. The beast had killed thousands of wights, and the crown’s forces could not stop him. Qyburn had only chuckled, and reminded him that two dragons had fallen already. One more would not be difficult.

Another tremor shook the walls. The wight dragon Viserion had torn down walls as if they were made of twigs, and he was smaller than Drogon. What was Daenerys doing? Ripping the towers from the keep to expose Cersei inside?

Far away, a door creaked open, and light steps flew down the corridor. Before Jaime had even gotten to the door, Cersei’s face appeared between the bars. The bolt flew back and the door opened. Ellaria still lay on the floor. The rats had been at her.

“How do we get out of here?” Cersei asked breathlessly. Her face was tear streaked, her gown streaked with dust.

Jaime wanted to ask a hundred questions, starting with _Why did you leave me down here so long?_ But he only asked, “Where is the Mountain?”

“Fighting his brother. Forget him.” She shook her head. “How do we get out of here?”

The Hound was here? Then Arya must be as well. Her loathing of Cersei was no secret. “Doesn’t Qyburn have an escape plan?” He thought that man knew every passage and secret of the keep by now. That was his job, as it had been Varys’s.

Cersei ground her teeth. “He’s dead. Why else would I need you?”

Why didn’t she just pull a dagger and have done with it? It would have hurt Jaime less. “Such sweet words, sister.” He couldn’t resist, even now, nettling her.

Her face flushed, her eyes glittered. At least she’d stopped crying. He hated when she cried, and he could neither kill someone nor fuck her to make her stop. “Do you want me to leave you here?”

Jaime slammed his hand against the open door, lest she try to slam it shut. “You can try.”

Above them, something crashed and dust settled over them. Cersei started crying again. “I can’t die here.”

Jaime slipped out of the cell, avoiding the tacky blood pooled on the floor. The hem of Cersei’s gown was dark with it. “Call for the bells. We’ll surrender. She gave me a fair trial, and I killed her father.”

Cersei laughed bitterly, and turned away, stalking down the corridor. “Some fool did ring the bells. That’s when her dragon started burning the city.”

Jaime’s blood ran cold. He stumbled after her. “Burning the city? No.”

“The city, then the Red Keep. How did you meet with Tyrion? Can we escape that way?” She led him through the dungeons as the barrage above continued.

“I’ve never followed them to the end. I don’t know where they go,” Jaime told her, knowing it would infuriate her.

Cersei whirled on him, her lips drawn back in a snarl. “I will not die down here like a rat. Get me _out_ of here.”

Jaime took the lead, struggling to remember the twists and turns he’d taken to reach the tunnels filled with dragon skulls. The skulls grew larger as they continued on, finally reaching the massive skull of Balerion, its forehead pierced with a huge bolt.

And then the quaking began again and Cersei seized him and buried her face in his chest, sobbing that she didn’t want to die.

Jaime looked up just in time to watch the ceiling fragment and fall on them.

* * *

 

Jaime woke with a gasp. He could still taste stone dust in his mouth, feel Cersei’s fingernails digging into his chest.

The ceiling above him was timbered, not stone, and moonlight limned the edges of the furniture, the hilts of twin swords hung side by side on the wall, the furs piled atop him.

Winterfell. It had a particular scent. Newly-fallen snow, fresh rushes, smoked meats, and dried herbs. After a night in the black cells, it was intoxicating.

The black cells. He’d never had such a vivid dream, nor such a grim one.

Jaime sat up gingerly, trying not to wake Brienne. She was snoring softly beside him. She did that when she was particularly exhausted, and they’d been up half the night talking. Arguing, really. Sometimes they argued as foreplay, but this hadn’t felt playful at all. They’d used words to wound, and with nothing resolved between them, they’d come together with a desperation he recognized too well.

He tried to slip out of bed, but her hand caught his arm. “Where are you going?” she mumbled.

“Just building up the fire,” he answered, and her grip slackened.

Now he had to, so he got up and padded across the cold stone floor. Goosebumps covered his skin immediately. The walls of Winterfell were warm, but the air was not. Jaime methodically added more kindling, more wood, stoked the fire until it caught again.

Brienne was good at building fires. In the hearth, in him. He’d thought about it, that first night, what she’d said before she took him to bed. Always put a log on the fire before you leave the room. They’d said goodbye too many times, never eager to part, always sure it was the last time they’d meet. And Brienne barely needed words to remind him that someone out there believed in his honor. He’d carried that small steady flame inside him to Dorne, to Highgarden and Riverrun, and finally north to her side.

Even so, Jaime still planned to return south. He didn’t even want to. It would be easier to stay here as a hostage of Sansa Stark, despite the stares and whispers, than to face Cersei again, possibly across the field of battle. Not that Cersei ever actually fought. She’d be watching from her lofty tower, a goblet of wine red as blood in her hand. But she would know. She would hear if her twin brother was seen in Northern armor, fighting alongside her enemies.

Jaime found a heavy woolen blanket and wrapped himself in it, then sat in the one comfortable chair by the fire. He stretched his feet toward the growing flames.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked drowsily, turning toward his side of their bed and burrowing under the fur.

Jaime turned so he could see her better. “Bad dream,” he said without thinking, then prayed she wouldn’t ask.

“Are we still fighting?” He hated how resigned she sounded.

Jaime sighed. “I don’t want to.” He still felt wrung out from his dream, and anxious about what he’d find when he reached King’s Landing. Surely nothing as dire as his dreaming mind feared, but he certainly wouldn’t find the two queens negotiating a truce.

“You’re going.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. Nothing at all like a few hours ago, when she had him pinned to the bed so hard he’d wear her bruises for days.

“Yes.” He couldn’t imagine an outcome where he and Cersei both lived, and Brienne didn’t die. He had no choice. If someone must die, it would be him. Let Cersei go into exile, let their child be born in some forgotten corner of Essos. Let Brienne’s anger burn out what love she bore him. Jaime would be naught but ash, and perhaps that would be enough to satisfy Daenerys Targaryen.

But Brienne wasn’t done. She sat up in bed, the furs tucked under her arms. “You know what she’s done, Jaime. What she’s capable of. You think she should rule?”

“No, but I don’t think she should _die_ either.” He could hear the old Lannister pride sharp and broken, the echo of his father in his voice, but he couldn’t stop it. 'Hear me roar' might be their House words, but their true creed was simple. Protect the family, at all costs.

“She blew up the Sept of Baelor. With _wildfire_. She murdered hundreds of people, innocent people, all to avoid a trial.” Brienne knew people in that sept, knew Margaery and Loras Tyrell well from her time with Renly.

Jaime flushed, anger boiling up again. “I know that.” If she thought he didn’t understand how horrific that day had been, she was wrong. He’d ridden through the wreckage while it still burned, while it still stank of charred flesh. Cersei had sworn it was to protect Tommen, but their son was dead and she’d contrived to place herself on the throne in her own right. But she was hardly the only one with blood on her hands. “Your Lady Sansa murdered Ramsay Bolton. She set starving dogs on him.”

“He raped her,” Brienne sputtered, her eyes wide. “Littlefinger sold her to him.”

“She _watched him die,_ Brienne.” He hadn’t been this harsh with her since King’s Landing, and she leaned away from him. “Then she watched Arya slit Petyr Baelish’s throat. You didn’t abandon _them_ when you learned what they’d done.”

Her cheeks had a hectic flush, spreading down to her chest, and Brienne threw off the furs suddenly. She swung out of the bed in a rush, bending to grab her robe and throw it on. She towered over him. “I swore an oath to protect them.”

“Do you truly believe Arya needs your protection?” He laughed coldly. “She slayed the Night’s King. She poisoned the _entire_ Frey family.”

“Why did you knight me, if you think my service such a farce?” Her eyes were shiny, and there was no mistaking the hurt in her voice. Gods, he hated this.

Jaime rose, tired of craning his neck to look at her. He gentled his voice as much as he could. He didn’t want to leave things between them like this. “She’s my sister, Brienne. And you’re asking me to let Daenerys butcher her.”

Brienne paled. “I’m not. I’m sorry, I’m truly not. But you are not your sister. Her crimes are not yours. You know what will happen if you go to her.”

“I’ve crimes enough to swing half a hundred times. You know that better than anyone. Don’t pretend I’m someone I’m not, not now.” He moved closer to her, tried to fold her into his arms without dropping the blanket wrapped around him.  

Brienne remained stiff, her cheek resting against his hair. “I hate this,” she ground out.

“I know, love. Come to bed. Let me hold you until the sun rises.”

* * *

 

The boy delivered a message again, but Bran Stark wasn’t talking, curled against the weirwood in his odd trance.

As in his dream, he saw and avoided Arya and the Hound at the Inn at the Crossroads. Odd, since they’d left before the army marched.

And when he presented himself at the Red Keep, Jaime was dragged back to the map room to be humiliated in front of the soldiers he’d once commanded. “Ser Gregor, take him to the black cells. I’ve no time for deserters and betrayers tonight.”

By the time Ellaria triumphantly died, a knot of fear had seized Jaime’s throat. His dream was coming true, bit by sickening bit.

And when Cersei finally came to him, he hurried her through the corridors, through the tunnels, past Balerion’s skull. He didn’t know where he was going, but he would not chance being caught in a collapse again.

Cersei was several feet behind him, complaining bitterly about the pace he set, when a post supporting the ceiling broke free and slammed Jaime into the floor.

That was new. He didn’t even feel it. He’d get up in a minute. When he could breathe.

* * *

 

Jaime jolted awake, next to Brienne. Again.

 


	3. Chapter 3

He left Brienne stoic. He left her crying. He left her in the night with nothing but a note in his childish scrawl.

He entered the Red Keep through every entrance he knew, by night and by day. He told Cersei she could not win. He told her she must surrender. He begged her to flee.

For his troubles, Jaime was killed by falling bricks, strangled, stabbed, beheaded, or thrown into a wall by the Mountain, and once left tied up in a chair outside Cersei’s bedchamber while Euron loudly fucked her. Jaime heckled him until Euron came out, naked and furious, and ran him through with a sword.

Not once did Cersei ever entertain surrender. Not once did she show him the slightest bit of affection until she was desperate and frightened and alone. And yet he came back, time and again, loathing himself a bit more each time. He’d sworn to protect her before he understood what it meant, before he could understand the difference between honorable service and total submission. At least Aerys had understood, and enjoyed, that Jaime’s Kingsguard vows were a mockery, a deliberate slap in Tywin Lannister’s face. Cersei never cared at all as long as her needs were met, her agenda advanced.

Jaime lost track of how many times he’d died. How many times he’d traveled the kingsroad. He tried to take a shortcut once and was mauled by a pack of wolves led by a massive beast that could only be a direwolf. He dearly wished he didn’t remember that one. Nor the time he’d been pinned in the rubble and had to slit his own throat because Cersei left him there in agony.

Dying hurt. Every time.

And waking up to hurt the woman he loved was just as painful.

Some nights he could slip away without Brienne waking. Some mornings she accepted his decision, her beautiful eyes remote and cold as the Wall. Nothing he did or said could penetrate her armor.

But the worst nights were the ones when she woke, and she begged, and she wept. When her naked fear for him was writ all over her face and in the firm grasp of her hands on him, trying to hold on just a little longer.

Jaime almost got away this time. But she followed him, her feet crammed hastily into her boots and a heavy wool robe drawn over her body. He was moons away from the last time they’d fucked, but for her it was only hours ago. The scent of him still clung to her skin.

“Stay. Stay with me. Please.” That _please_ wrecked him. Brienne should never have to beg for anything, much less for his love or his worthless life.

What could he say but that he was hateful, putting her through this, over and over again. This was his punishment, for pushing Bran Stark from that window. Endlessly failing to protect Brienne from his own selfishness, endlessly watching his twin die for the crown she’d sacrificed everything to wear. And outside the Red Keep, beyond his sight, the smallfolk of King’s Landing burning after all he’d done to prevent it.

He couldn’t even look Brienne in the eye, half hoping this would be the last time he suffered this night, and half hoping these weren’t their last moments, all the sweetness that came before washed away in bitterness that Brienne would carry for the rest of her life.

The ride south passed in a blur punctuated by stops at inns for more wine. He’d never enjoyed it the way his siblings did, but now he saw what they liked about it. Then the stupidest Lannister lived up to the name, getting caught coming through Daenerys’s lines. He was half drunk and left his glove off by mistake. It felt right, being dragged into a tent and chained to a post. Familiar. Would Daenerys kill him before the battle or wait for the larger spectacle of killing two Lannisters at once? Or perhaps all three? She hadn’t seemed happy with Tyrion when they left Winterfell.

He didn’t care, really. Not about anything. None of this mattered, as long as he ended up dead. Jaime still had no idea why Bran had done this now, or what he was supposed to do. Perhaps he’d died that morning in the godswood, and this was his personal hell. It must be. Else his brother wouldn’t have come to the tent, committed treason to free him, and sent him back to Cersei. At least now Jaime knew for certain where the tunnel led, and that there was a boat waiting for them if Jaime ever got them that far.

He told Tyrion true, he’d never cared for the people of King’s Landing in any personal way. They spat “Kingslayer” at him every day he traveled the city with Robert for more than 15 years. But he’d vowed to protect innocents when Barristan Selmy knighted him in the Kingswood, and damn it, his tattered honor still clung to that much of his vows at least.

Ser Davos Seaworth spent the entire trip from the camp to the city chastising Jaime for leaving Winterfell. He deserved it, so he listened to the other man’s scorn without his usual quips and barbs. Finally, when they were within sight of the city gates, Seaworth eyed Jaime in his hooded cloak and said gruffly, “You’re a dead man, you know that?”

Jaime almost laughed, but he felt the truth of it in his bones. “I’ve been dead a long time now.”

Seaworth’s eyes narrowed. “Your brother will die for this, too. Jon can’t stop Daenerys when she wants something, and I’m not sure he wants to anymore.” He clapped Jaime on the shoulder. “Make this worth it.”

But they’d released him too late. Jaime didn’t make it into the Red Keep before the gates closed, and he wasted too much time finding a way outside the city walls to the water and around the base of the cliffs to the cave.

Where Euron waited. Another mad king, at least in his own mind. In truth a reaver, honest in his blatant self-interest, at least, but Jaime had no patience for him. Euron needed to bait him into a fight. It would kill a man like Euron to go out cowering on a beach instead of fighting. And he would doom Cersei just to satisfy his own needs.

A fight would only waste time Jaime didn’t have, but Euron seemed determined to follow him if Jaime didn’t engage him now. Before he lost his hand, Jaime would have killed him in three strokes. The instinct was still there, and Jaime tried to take Euron down quickly, but his skills were no longer up to the task with dull steel and an enemy capable of strategy. The fight was brutal, and at one point Jaime had the mad thought that Bronn had trained him for this. There was no honor to be had here, no reward beyond survival. And as Jaime staggered away from Euron’s dying body, he thought survival was increasingly out of his reach anyway. The wound in his hip was painful, it made every step an agony, but the thrust through his back was more worrisome. He was starting to have trouble breathing, and Jaime had died enough times now to understand that did not bode well. He might not even reach Cersei this time. Daenerys was already destroying the castle and the city. But he had to know if escape was possible.

So Jaime pushed on, struggled up flights of stairs, thought he caught a glimpse of Arya Stark fleeing the castle. Perhaps he might find Cersei already dead. He would just lay down and die beside her if that was the case. Wouldn’t that give Daenerys everything she wanted?

None of it mattered. Cersei was still teary and alone when he found her, though this time she seemed upset to find him injured. She didn’t seem to remember sending Bronn to kill him. Jaime still tried to hurry her through the tunnels, but he couldn’t move fast enough. Rockfalls blocked the cave tunnel. They could go no further than the skull of Balerion. He knew what was coming, that there was no way out. The tunnels behind them would collapse too. They would never make it back up to the castle proper, and even if they did, Daenerys would hunt them down.

Cersei started crying again, about wanting their baby to live. Jaime remembered their other babies. Joffrey, demanding from birth, taking Cersei away from him until Jaime resented the infant bitterly. He’d gone wrong early on, and Cersei had never seen it. Myrcella, a disappointment to Robert because she wasn’t male, but with a beauty he’d planned to exploit for his own gain. Tommen, the spare Robert had insisted on, the boy who’d always loved deeply and unconditionally, even his white-cloaked uncle.

This child would not draw breath. It would not be a pawn in the game of thrones as its siblings had been. And he could not even mourn for it. Even when Cersei had promised him, so briefly, that he would be a real father this time, he’d known it for a lie.

But this was the end. So Jaime showed Cersei mercy. He lied to her, as she had to him. He told her all the things she wanted to hear, the things that were no longer true for him. They weren’t the only ones who mattered, they never had been.

Jaime held her for as long as he could.

 

* * *

And he woke beside Brienne. Again.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Watching Drogon and Daenerys attack was entirely different when Jaime wasn’t actively fighting for his life. He’d not had the luxury in the Battle of the Gold Road to simply watch as the pair of them soared and dove over their prey, leaving chaos and flames in their wake. And in the Battle of Winterfell, he’d only had a few seconds to spare to thank the Warrior that the beast was on their side before he’d needed to return to hacking apart wights, grateful that a single stroke was all that was required when wielding Valyrian steel. Without it, he would have been dead a hundred times over.

Watching Drogon attack the Iron Fleet from the foot of the cliffs below the Red Keep, Jaime had that same sense of awe he’d felt watching Drogon and Rhaegal fly over Winterfell. Something so terrible and beautiful should not exist. Drogon sped over the sea, turning and twisting with Daenerys clinging to its back. The ships never stood a chance. She burned sails, she burned men right off the decks. Ships ripped apart under the force of Drogon’s blast. When the bay held nothing but flaming wreckage and drowning men, the dragon climbed above the Red Keep and flew out of Jaime’s sight. 

He hurried to the cave and tried to decide if he should kill Euron first or bring Cersei down to meet him. She stood a better chance of escape with Euron than with him, solely by virtue of having two hands for rowing. Clearly Ser Davos had forgotten that Jaime was short a hand. Cersei would tire of rowing in minutes, assuming she deigned to try at all.

Euron made the decision for him, by swimming out of the bay faster than Jaime anticipated. He barely had time to duck behind a rock outcropping and raise his sword. He would have only one chance. The pirate stopped briefly by the boat, then stalked up the beach and into the cave, slowing when he saw the entrance to the tunnels. 

Jaime started to move, and Euron’s hand went to his blade, spinning to face Jaime just in time to take Jaime’s thrust right under his ribs. 

Euron’s eyes went wide. “Kingslayer?” He looked down at the blade and Jaime twisted it as best he could with his off hand. Euron groaned, blood starting to pour from his mouth. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees, almost dragging Jaime down with him. 

“Alas, you’re no king,” Jaime spat at him, placing a foot on Euron’s shoulder so he could pull the blade free.

“But I fucked the queen,” Euron retorted, smiling with a mouthful of bloody teeth. It was obscene, but the man looked happy. Maniacally so. 

Jaime didn’t take the bait, he saw Euron reaching for a dagger. Jaime stepped back, his bloody sword still raised. “And I don’t care.”

The trek up into the castle was faster without blood loss and pain slowing his steps. Cersei wasn’t in the map room, so Jaime continued to the stairs to Cersei’s private quarters. 

As he reached the staircase, Sandor Clegane stood on the steps above him. The Hound faced Qyburn, Cersei, and her Kingsguard on their way down. 

Drogon roared past, and the tower above them exploded, part of the ceiling falling and killing several Kingsguard at once. The Mountain covered Cersei, but then he turned to his brother. Qyburn tried to direct his monster to stay with the queen, but the Mountain picked his maker up and slammed him into the debris, shattering his skull. Jaime had had his fill of shattered skulls of late, but he took some grim pleasure in the fallen maester’s demise. 

Cersei finally saw him, and Jaime gestured for her to come to him. The Hound only had eyes for the Mountain. She eased around the scarred knight and threw herself into Jaime’s arms. “Let’s go,” he muttered, and pulled out of her embrace. 

Cersei struggled to keep up as he moved through the castle, down staircases and corridors used mainly by the servants. “Where are we going?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

Jaime didn’t look back. “Out of here. Unless you’d prefer to stay until Daenerys melts the Red Keep like Harrenhal.” 

A loud boom echoed down the corridor, but the castle didn’t shake. That had come from the city. “What was that?” Jaime asked. 

Cersei smiled, predatory and full of teeth. “A gift for the Dothraki whore. She wants the throne, she can be queen of the ashes,” Cersei said with a short, bitter laugh. She coughed, starting to slow down. 

They’d reached a long flight of stairs leading down, and Jaime waited for her to catch up. He seized her arm. “What did you do?” 

He knew before she answered, pulling out of his grip and sweeping past him to start down the last flight of steps before the tunnels began. “Qyburn placed wildfire around the city. His little birds will be lighting them now. One will fell her last beast, and we’ll find out how Unburnt that little bitch really is.” 

Wildfire. Of course. It worked on the High Sparrow and everyone else in the Sept of Baelor, so why not? Jaime’s stomach clenched. “And if you burn the entire bloody city with her?” 

Cersei stopped at the foot of the stairs and glanced back at him. “Since when do we worry about the sheep? Smallfolk are a commodity the city has never run short of. They can be replaced. We are all that matters. All that has ever mattered.” 

She didn’t say it, but he heard it anyway. Their children were replaceable too. Royal children were power, especially for a queen. The child in her womb was the most valuable thing in the world to her right now, certainly more than its father. 

Jaime swept past her, through the long, dark gallery of Targaryen statuary and banners moved to storage after the Rebellion. Robert had kept them around because it amused him to destroy them with his war hammer on occasion. 

Another boom sounded above them. Wildfire burning in the city, the dragon above. Their own soldiers were likely dying by the hundreds, trapped between Northern soldiers, fire, and desperate smallfolk panicking in the streets. The entire city a pyre to dwarf the funeral pyres of Winterfell. And Cersei would go free, certain of her righteousness. He wanted to scream.

“How much further?” she asked, clutching at her side. 

They passed Balerion’s skull and kept going. The rockfall that blocked the passage hadn’t happened yet. That was something. Jaime wasn’t precisely sure how much time they had left to get away. 

The tunnel abruptly ended, sunlight momentarily blinding him. 

Cersei hurried past him into the cave, hesitating only a moment when she saw Euron’s body. “Someone was here,” she warned.

“Me. I killed him,” Jaime answered grimly.

Cersei frowned at him, hands on her hips. “That was stupid. We needed him.”

“He was trying to  _ kill  _ me. Forgive me, Your Grace,” Jaime said with a mocking bow. 

She turned back to the bay. The Iron Fleet was still ablaze, bodies and wreckage choking the waters between the foundering ships. “What do we do now?” 

Jaime passed her and held the prow of the little dinghy steady. “You’ll need to row us out of the bay so we’re not spotted.” 

“You want  _ me  _ to row?” 

Jaime held up his golden hand. “Well, I can’t, so if you want to get out of here, you row.” 

“If Euron was here—”

“Greyjoy  _ gave up  _ on you, Cersei,” Jaime snapped. “I told him we needed to get you out of the castle, and all he wanted to do was fight. He didn’t give a damn about you.” 

“You think I cared about him? I needed his ships. I still need his ships. One must have survived. We’ll go to Pyke.” Cersei struggled to lift her skirts and get into the boat. Her slippers and hem were wet.

Pyke, on the far side of Westeros. That was as likely as Rhaegal rising from the sea and carrying them there. “Yara Greyjoy took Pyke.” 

“How do you know—” She laughed as she finally managed to arrange herself ungracefully in the boat. “They let you into their war councils. Did you bend the knee to the little bitch?” 

Jaime started pushing the boat out into the water. His boots were soaked, and he could hear the dragon approaching again. “No. I promised to fight for the living.” He’d sworn only to Brienne, and wouldn’t that gall his sister.

Cersei stared at him as he pushed, his boots skidding on the rocks. He had some trouble maneuvering the boat with one hand. The tide was too low. “You should have killed her there.”

“Surrounded by her entire army and two dragons?” The boat was nearly free now, and Jaime was soaked to his thighs. The water was frigid. 

“You could have seduced her. You’re still pretty enough, if she didn’t mind bedding a cripple. After a Dothraki she should find anyone who doesn’t stink of horse shit an improvement.” Her lip curled in a sneer. “But then you’ve never had the stomach for bedding anyone else.” As if using her cunt as a weapon made her better than him somehow. 

Jaime gave the boat one last shove into the water and awkwardly dragged himself up into the boat. Cersei offered no help, and still hadn’t touched the oars. “We needed her against the army of the dead. You weren’t there. You don’t understand.”

High above them the dragon soared around the Keep, breathing fire as it went. Something exploded and a rumble started above them, shaking all the way down the cliff. Behind them, he heard rocks fall. Jaime glanced back. The tunnel mouth was choked with rock.

Cersei was watching him intently as he reached for the oars. He could at least try to row. He would have to. “How did you keep your head on your shoulders? It was Sansa Stark’s armored beast, wasn’t it? The one who carries a Lannister sword?”

Jaime could hold the left oar, and tried to wedge his golden hand in the right one, managed it for a moment before the damn thing slipped out. “Are you going to help me or do you want to die here?”

Cersei slid over beside him, taking the right oar. She moved it all wrong, but Jaime tried to compensate to keep them from running right into the cliff face. 

“Tell me,” she commanded. “Did you think I didn’t notice, the way that cow looked at you? I always knew.”

They were finally moving away from the cave, but an ominous rumbling started above them, and the dragon’s shadow passed overhead again. Another boom, and Jaime looked up just in time to see an entire tower start to crack apart directly above them.

Maybe he was the stupidest Lannister. Forty deaths, perhaps more, before he accepted what Brienne had told him.  _ You can’t save her.  _

Jaime turned to look at his sister, and the softness in her expression when she first saw him on the stairs was long gone. She was angry now, and about to be angrier. “Brienne. Her name is Brienne. I gave her the sword, I gave her the armor, and I sent her to protect Sansa.”

Cersei dropped her oar and slapped his face. “How dare—”

Jaime barely felt it. It wasn’t the first time Cersei had slapped him, nor even the hundredth. “I fought beside her. I fucked her. I loved her. I will  _ always  _ love her.”

His last memory before the tower fell on them was Cersei’s stunned face. 

 

* * *

 

Jaime woke only briefly, gathering Brienne close to him, and slept better than he had since this endless battle began. For once, if he dreamed he didn’t remember it. 

In the morning, he slipped away to the godswood. Bran was still slumped against the tree. He wondered if the boy was always there, if anyone worried about him, what would happen if he was removed from the tree. 

“What do you want from me?” he asked, not expecting an answer. 

Jaime pulled a large fur from the boy’s wheeled chair and tucked it around him, pressing his hand to the tree trunk for leverage as he stood. The godswood disappeared.

_ Green fire rushing through a tunnel. Jon Snow running a man through in a dark alley. The blackened corpse of a child holding a toy. Bells ringing. Jaime killing Aerys. A girl on a white horse smeared with blood, riding through flaming ruins. _

Jaime found himself on his knees before Bran Stark. The boy hadn’t moved. Jaime recoiled from the tree. 

If Bran had seen Aerys… did he really know? Did he understand why it happened? The choice Jaime had made? Jaime staggered away from the tree. If Bran wanted him to save the city again, he’d chosen the wrong man. Stabbing two old men in the back had been simple. Jaime had no idea how to stop two queens bent on destruction, but he could start with the wildfire. Kill Qyburn, stop the explosions. He needed to return to the Red Keep. 

But first, he had to say goodbye to Brienne again. Her eyes were killing him, and now he knew exactly what that felt like. Her chin wobbled as she tried desperately not to cry, fussing with his saddlebags to avoid looking him in the eye, hiding away the soft heart he’d always known was there beneath her armor. 

When Jaime rode away from Winterfell, he left his heart in her hands. 


	5. Chapter 5

The castle, always bustling with activity during Robert’s reign and rarely quiet during Tommen’s, was silent as a tomb when Jaime snuck up from the beach hours before the battle. He suspected that the servants had abandoned their posts like rats from a sinking ship. Qyburn came and went from Cersei’s tower, but he didn’t speak to soldiers or guards. He gave his messages to Varys’s little birds, ill-fed orphans with glittering eyes and bare feet. At least in Varys’s time, his spies had eaten and slept somewhere clean. 

A single, trembling young man also made regular trips up and down the tower. The queen required a great deal of Dornish red today. She often did. He’d once jested that he expected her babe to slide from the womb clutching a goblet. Cersei had thrown a flagon at his head for that. 

Jaime soon tired of hiding behind a pillar in the map room, hunger gnawing at his belly and his feet weary. But the sun moving across the sky overhead told him that the battle, and hence his chance, would come soon. He unsheathed Widow’s Wail and moved closer to where his quarry would exit the tower staircase. He would need to kill the child, too.

He missed combat. Missed sizing up an opponent on the tourney field and feeling his blood surge. Missed charging onto the field with an army at his back. In the Battle of Winterfell, he’d felt more himself than he’d been in years. Jaime had expected to find the Stranger waiting for him there, would have welcomed death sword in hand, defending the realm, protecting those he loved. Sneaking around, hiding in dark corners, he felt more like Qyburn or Varys than an anointed knight. And those vows mattered. Brienne’s opinion of him mattered. It was damned inconvenient. 

He had no more time to lament this before Jaime heard Qyburn’s robes lightly brushing the steps as he descended. He moved behind another column, closer to his quarry, and waited. The bird Qyburn would meet had not yet arrived. With luck, he or she wouldn’t before this bloody business was done. Jaime did not relish killing children.

Qyburn stepped into the room holding a small book. He walked to Tywin’s desk, now Cersei’s, and bent to pick up a quill.

Jaime struck fast and true, Widow’s Wail slicing neatly through the man’s back and out his chest before he could make a sound. Qyburn never saw him, slumping onto the desk with blood soaking the pages under his hand. 

A slight scrape over stone made Jaime look up. A scarred, weedy boy stood between him and the map room, a wicked little blade in his hand. Even over the blood and shit stench of Qyburn’s corpse, Jaime could smell wildfire on the boy. He would never forget that smell, sharp enough to burn his nose and strangely sweet. 

Jaime pulled his sword from Qyburn’s body, blood dripping from the steel. “Flee now and this ends here,” he offered, Brienne’s voice in his head again. This boy would have gutted him without a thought were he in Jaime’s place. 

The boy thought about it for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth between the map room  and Jaime’s sword. He hesitated too long. Neither of them heard approaching footsteps, yet a dark figure stepped from a column right behind the boy, dagger raised. 

Arya Stark covered the boy’s mouth with a gloved hand and put her knife to his throat at the same time she stepped away from his slash at her thigh. The boy dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Arya took in the scene and her eyebrow raised. “Lannister,” she said evenly. “Why are you here? You were Sansa’s hostage.”

It was a relief to hear it stated plainly. Brienne refused to acknowledge his captivity, pleasant though it had largely been. She insisted he was a guest, but in truth he was merely on a much longer leash than the last time. 

“She’s my sister.” The simplest answer for the most complicated feelings. Guilt and grief and even now lust, an ocean of memories he’d nearly drowned in. 

“You’re a fool.” 

“So I’m told.” His father, Cersei, Olenna Tyrell, Tyrion, Davos Seaworth. Was there anyone left who didn’t think him a fool? Even Brienne had seen what he couldn’t, long before he did. 

Arya’s chin tipped up, her gaze going to the stairs. “She up there?” So the little wolf was here to kill Cersei. For what, Jaime could only guess. Ned Stark? The Red Wedding? She had more than enough reason. 

“Go home, girl.” Sandor Clegane’s gruff voice came from the map room. 

Arya didn’t take her eyes off Jaime, his sword still raised. 

“Are you going to stop her from leaving, Kingslayer?” 

Jaime dropped the point of his sword. He wouldn’t sheath it yet. “No. Lady Arya is free to go, with my thanks for stopping Qyburn’s little bird from flying away.”

The Hound turned his attention back to the girl. He moved forward, rested his large palm on the back of her head to make her look up at his sad, scarred face. “You go with me, you die here. The fire will get her, or the Dothraki. Or the dragon. She dies here. You don’t have to.” 

Hearing the Hound like this was startling. Sandor Clegane, of all people, trying to turn Arya away from certain death even as he seemed eager to embrace it himself. Clegane would keep going, onto that staircase. Jaime had seen him before, must have barely missed Arya leaving. 

Arya hesitated, even as the Hound moved away from her, toward the stairs. “Sandor, thank you,” she told him, and her voice held a raw, almost unwilling fondness. Jaime recognized that feeling too well.

Clegane nodded and disappeared up the stairs. Arya watched the space where he’d been.

“Cersei’s reign ends today, whether in that tower or in the tunnels below.” Jaime took a hesitant step in her direction and finally sheathed his blade. Without Qyburn telling her the state of the battle, Cersei might not leave the tower in time. 

Arya gave him an odd look. “What do you mean?” 

“The tower is about to come down. With luck Clegane will just miss going down with it. You need to leave now. Without Qyburn’s wildfire, maybe you’ll make it out of the city.” He would wait here. If Cersei made it out of the tower, he would send her down to Euron. Perhaps he would have better luck with rowing. As for Jaime, perhaps he’d go wait on the Iron Throne and see who came to claim it.

Arya’s eyes narrowed, then widened. Instead of leaving, she backed up to the middle of the map room, open to the burning sky. She looked up at the perfectly intact tower and waited. 

“Go. The tower is about to fall,” Jaime insisted, following her out and grabbing her arm. 

Arya twisted away, her eyes trained on the tower above. The dragon wheeled above them, turning and opening its jaws. Bright flame poured against the stones, and the roof flew blew apart, tiles alight and spinning through the air. 

Her gaze snapped down to Jaime. “Find me when you wake up.”

“What? Go, hurry.” Jaime yanked her arm again. Debris was starting to fall all around them. He thought the loop would repeat, but if it didn’t? The Starks would need this one. 

Arya pushed him away. A shadow fell on them, growing as she stared directly at him. “Come find me when you wake up.” 

Jaime didn’t even feel the impact.

 

* * *

  
The innkeep was starting to give him dirty looks. 

Jaime had been sitting at a table in the corner of the godsforsaken Inn at the Crossroads all day. He’d ordered and eaten several deeply questionable meat pies, drunk numerous weak ales, and waited. 

This was the only place he could think of where he’d seen Arya and Clegane before the Red Keep. The trouble was, Jaime had only seen them a handful of times. He’d traveled this road so many times, he couldn’t remember what time of day he’d seen them. He’d left Winterfell in the middle of the night, early in the morning, when the sun was high. His goal had always been King’s Landing, and when he saw them he was generally trying to avoid being snatched back to Winterfell and Lady Sansa’s punishment. 

At least the gossip had been informative here at the crossing of the kingsroad and the River Road. While Jaime knew that the Twins was in the hands of Lord Edmure Tully since the Freys were all poisoned at a feast, he learned that the few survivors swore that Arya Stark had done the deed herself. Jaime had heard the same tale at Winterfell, but hadn't realized it was known outside of the North. How close had he come to death, sitting unwillingly at Walder Frey’s table? 

Travelers also talked of the dragon queen’s advisor beheaded on the walls of King’s Landing, and the Northern army that had come through only days earlier with Jon Snow at the head of the column. They brought with them tales of the battle against the dead. Jaime had been there and scarcely recognized the tall tales being bandied about now. The dead had had three of their own dragons, their own terrible queen. Lady Lyanna Mormont had turned into a bear and slain an entire horde of giants all by herself. The red witch had sacrificed the Dothraki to her god to ensure their victory. Jaime himself had pledged his sword to Lady Sansa in exchange for her hand. 

Jaime had almost laughed at that last one, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Lady Sansa would sooner cut off his balls than entertain wedding another Lannister. When all this was done, if he lived, perhaps she might let him live long enough to beg Brienne’s forgiveness if nothing else.

The sun was nearly set, and Jaime’s ass numb from sitting on a hard bench, before the small, cloaked figure of Arya Stark slipped through the door and took a table near the fire. Whatever the little wolf had wanted to tell him, she might not do it with Clegane around, so Jaime crossed the room and took a seat across from her.

Arya’s eyes widened. “What are you—”

“You said to find you when I woke up.” 

To her credit, she barely flinched. Wherever she’d gone when she left King’s Landing, Arya Stark had gained a strange stillness, a direct watchfulness that unnerved Jaime. 

He felt a presence at his back and dug a coin from his pocket. He slapped it on the table. “Two ales, two bowls of stew.” 

A blade tickled his throat. Clegane’s gruff voice came from just over his shoulder. “Or I’ll just take all your gold and send you back to Brienne of Tarth trussed up like a turkey. I didn’t do a damn thing to her and that bitch bit off my ear. I wonder what she’d do to the likes of you.”

Bit off his ear? How had Jaime not heard that story?

Arya’s gaze flicked up to Clegane, a silent conversation passing between them, and he heaved a sigh. “Why can’t I fucking kill him? He’s going back to his cunt sister.”

“Sit down.” Jaime almost laughed at her command, but he didn’t want the knife to slip. Clegane was about as well trained as her direwolf.

The Hound thumped down on the bench next to Jaime, grumbling to himself. 

Arya turned her attention back to Jaime. “What did you say?”

Was he not remembering this right? Or maybe whatever she was supposed to know hadn’t happened yet? He’d never had a loop fail this early. “You said to find you when I woke up.”

She leaned forward. “When did I say this?” 

Either she was going to believe him, or he’d be dead in about a minute. He didn’t have much to lose. From the way Clegane was glaring at him, the Hound preferred the latter option. 

Jaime cleared his throat. “Three days from now.”

The Hound barked a laugh. He got up and wandered off, likely in search of ale. 

“Where?”

“In the Red Keep.” He could have elaborated, but it wouldn’t mean anything to her until it was too late anyway.

“Three days from now, in the Red Keep, I told you to find me when you woke up. That’s your story.” Arya stared straight through him. He couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or not. 

“You don’t believe me, just kill me and get it over with.” Maybe next time he’d just stay at Winterfell. Let the battle play out without any interference from him. Not fucking hurt Brienne for once and see what happened.

“What happens in King’s Landing three days from now?” Arya asked, her gaze sharpening.

Jaime considered just telling her there was a battle, but he might as well tell her what he knew. “Daenerys destroys the Iron Fleet and all the defenses on the city walls. The city surrenders. And then she burns it and the Red Keep with dragon fire.”

“My brother?”

Jaime shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. Except…” he hesitated.

“You had a vision. A dream.”

Jaime grabbed her arm, and her dagger point was pressed under his chin before he ever saw her draw it. “How did you know that?”

She lowered the dagger, and Jaime released her arm. “Because it happened to me. In the battle of Winterfell.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-reading old fic, I was reminded that Jaime calling Arya "little wolf" is something I picked up from SandwichesYumYum's epic [The Gentlest Schism](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186263/chapters/2420278), which caused a great many of us to stay up half the night reading and crying back in 2013-2014. The fic is still posted, unfinished but forming a complete story in the first 12-13 chapters. Others also refer to Arya as "little wolf" in several fics from that era by various authors. Sandor also refers to Arya as "little wolf bitch" in book canon.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaime’s knee kept knocking against the Hound’s. Arya Stark had somehow ended up in the only chair in the room, forcing he and Clegane to sit side by side on the narrow bed. Assuming they didn’t move on tonight, Jaime assumed Arya would end up in the bed with both he and Clegane stretched miserably on the floor. There were no other rooms available, Jaime had already tried bribing the innkeep without success.

At least she’d gotten them extra food. A rotund young man she’d called Hot Pie had brought Arya a sack filled with slightly stale bread and apples, and a pitcher of ale. With war and winter gripping the seven kingdoms, they were lucky to get even that. The pair spoke quietly, or at least Arya did, but Jaime caught enough of the conversation to gather that they’d traveled together and he still felt in her debt. 

Someday Jaime would have the full story of how the little wolf with the big brown eyes became such a skilled fighter. But not tonight. Tonight was for tales of the long night none of them had expected to survive.

“I died on the battlements, when the first wave came over the walls,” Arya began quietly. “And I woke up in Gendry’s bed when the horns sounded.”

The Hound choked on his ale. 

Jaime, who had spent some time in the forge after the armies left, was not surprised. Robert’s bastard couldn’t go more than ten minutes without saying her name, usually in a reverent tone as if she were the blushing maid in a song rather than a killer colder than Jaime had ever been. At least this besotted Baratheon wouldn’t start a war to keep his wayward Stark girl. 

“I thought it was a nightmare. But it all happened again. The Dothraki charging, the retreat, the castle being overrun. I lived a little longer that time.” Her gaze focused on Clegane. “You died in front of me, cowering from the flames.”

“Don’t fucking tell that story again,” Clegane grunted.

“You knew about this?” Jaime asked. The Hound didn’t seem the kind of man to believe such tales.

Clegane turned to look at him incredulously. “We won. How the fuck else do you explain that?”

“Fair point,” Jaime conceded. For all their bravado, Jaime recalled looking around the table at the war council and noting how resigned they all were. Death was expected if not welcomed. He turned his attention back to Arya. “This is Bran’s doing.” 

She nodded. “He touched my arm as he went past on his way to the godswood. I felt dizzy for a moment afterward but thought nothing of it until later. The battle was always starting just as I woke up.”

“We all agreed to defend Bran, to lure the Night’s King out, but we never had a plan to kill him. Twice I talked Brienne into using her Valyrian sword to kill him when he came through the gates. She died in your arms both times.”

Jaime swallowed hard around the sudden lump in his throat. Brienne had gone down at least three times in the fight and he’d dug her out each time, hacking desperately at the wights snapping and clawing at her, blind panic and rage lending strength to his arm. He hadn’t dared to leave her side for more than a moment.

“You charged the wight dragon after she died. You went up like a torch, and you smiled like it was a relief.”

Her eyes were haunted, and she stopped, took a deep draught of ale. When she started speaking again, her voice was distant, like she was telling the story for the hundredth time, but Clegane’s reactions told Jaime that she’d never told him this much.

She tried to warn the Unsullied commander not to send the Dothraki to their doom, but he only stared at her implacably and insisted he must follow his queen’s command. 

She tried to save Beric Dondarrion, five, ten times before she understood that his sacrifice was the only thing keeping her and Clegane alive. For all the chances she had, some things were not within her power to change. 

Arya spent hours in Winterfell’s library, dancing from bookshelf to bookshelf, learning the steps to avoid the shambling wights intent on ripping the living flesh from her bones. One wrong step led to gruesome deaths. Over and over. She killed herself just as often as she was killed. 

At least most of his deaths were by sword or rockfall. Jaime remembered too well being borne down by wights, the fetid odor of decay filling his nose and mouth, sharp skeletal fingers clawing at his skin, biting teeth clacking against his armor. Brienne had saved him too, more than once. On the battlefield that night, she was his, and he was hers, and death met every foe who tried to stand between them. 

“What did you see?” Jaime asked when she stopped to drink again. She cocked her head in question, and he clarified, “You said you had dreams. Visions.”

Arya shook her head a little, leaned back in her chair. “They were flashes. Between death and waking. Jon hiding from blue dragonfire. Theon charging the Night’s King. Sansa sobbing in the dark.” 

Jaime cast his mind back to that night. “You didn’t know the dead were rising in the crypt.”

“I gave her a dagger at the start of the battle every time after that. And I tried to get Jon to the godswood. So many times. He never made it in time. I started killing myself every time he failed. I was afraid if Bran died, that would be the end.”

Jaime’s blood ran cold. She was right. And if anything befell Bran at Winterfell now, Jaime’s next death would be his last.

A small, sad smile curved her lips. “I watched you all die. Hundreds of times. Sometimes I slit my own throat to stop hearing the screams. And it only stopped when I killed the Night’s King. Why do you think Bran picked you, Kingslayer?”

He’d lost his swordhand, abandoned his sister, crossed three kingdoms alone, and still the name dogged his steps. “Not to kill the queen. Cersei dies no matter what I do,” he snarled.

Clegane barked a laugh. “You bloody tried to save her. She welcomed you back with open arms, eh?”  

Of course she hadn’t. Only when she was already desperate. “She’s my sister.” That argument wore thinner every time he said it. 

“If she survives the battle, her death is mine.” Arya made it sound like a command.

Jaime paused on the cusp of begging for Cersei’s life, and remembered each and every attempt he’d made to save her. How she doled out affection when it suited her, cast him aside when it didn’t. How he’d held her once, when she cried for their child’s life, the curve of her belly against him far too small for a babe planted in her before Jaime took Highgarden. “Swift. No pain.”

“I can’t guarantee that,” she countered.

“You can try.” His tone was just as steely as hers. “My father was the one who destroyed your family, and he’s long dead.” 

Fury flashed across her face before she schooled her features back to cold indifference. What her voice lacked in volume, it made up in power. “Who told you to attack my father in the street? To murder Jory Cassel? Who do you think sent Lannister soldiers to kill my septa and my dancing master? Who sent the Gold Cloaks to kill King Robert’s bastards? Who whispered in Joffrey’s ear to kill my father instead of sending him to the Wall? None of  _ that  _ was your father.”

Jaime wanted to protest, four decades of instinct to defend her welling up. But he couldn’t. If Varys had been Master of Whispers, Cersei had been Mistress. A whisper in the right ear, and her enemies bled or fled.

“I heard her tell that cunt son of yours that the North would rally behind Stark if he took the black,” Clegane said flatly. 

All the fight went out of Jaime. “Then what am I supposed to do?” Something stupid, no doubt. 

“If you don’t know, then we’re all fucked,” Clegane observed sourly.

Arya drank again, stood, paced the tiny room, thinking. “Where do you wake up?”

“Next to Brienne.”

“You have a lot more time to work with.”

Jaime shrugged. “Hasn’t done me any good so far.”

“If Cersei is a dead end, then you have to go to Jon,” she said as if it was obvious.

“And tell him what? All I know is that she burns the city after the surrender. He won’t believe me.” Jon Snow had no cause to trust Jaime. They hadn’t really spoken since Jaime’s first trip to Winterfell, before Jon left to join the Night’s Watch. 

“I thought you saw it happen.” 

“Cersei told me.”  _ Oh.  _ He only ever saw the dragon attacking the Red Keep or the bay. 

“You can’t trust anything that bitch said,” Clegane reminded him.

Arya nodded. “We’ll watch the battle, and then I’ll kill you.” 

 

* * *

 

Jaime lingered in bed half the morning, long after Brienne insisted on getting up. She didn’t know he still intended to leave, but he’d made no promises to stay. There was no way to spare her pain, one way or another, but he could spare himself another parting. One more moment of selfishness, added to so many.

Before he left, he took Podrick aside and asked him to guard Bran. The broken Stark was still huddled against the tree, eyes white and unseeing. Pod looked like he wanted to ask questions, but whatever he saw in Jaime’s face stopped him. 

The ride to the crossroads went by faster than usual. He knew better now how the battle had proceeded, could see the plans Snow and Grey Worm had made, but he could not get the destruction out of his head. He, Clegane, and Arya had watched the battle from the hills overlooking the city from the west. 

When the towers of the Red Keep began to fall, Jaime had wondered where Cersei had died this time, without Clegane’s interference with the Mountain. And when Daenerys had landed her dragon in the shattered entrance hall of the Red Keep, Arya slid a dagger under his ribs as she’d promised. 

This time he reserved two rooms for the night, then waited only an hour or so before Arya and the Hound arrived. He let them eat their meals, then approached their table. He sat before they could object, and looked straight at Arya. “What happened to you is happening to me,” he said without preamble.

Clegane’s hand went to the dagger on his belt, and Jaime turned to him with a smirk. “And you believe me because how the fuck else did we win against the dead?” 

Arya glanced around at the people around them. “Go back to Winterfell,” she hissed. “You can’t stop us from finishing this.”

Jaime lowered his voice to match hers. “You woke up before the Battle of Winterfell with Gendry the blacksmith, and you watched me charge that wight dragon so I wouldn’t have to live without Brienne.” He didn’t remember it, but he knew that much.

“Fuck me,” Clegane muttered. “Not this shit again.” 

Arya sat stock still. The only hint that she was surprised was a slight widening of her eyes.

Jaime rose from the bench. “I have two rooms upstairs. Find me later if you want to help stop Daenerys from burning every man, woman, and child in King’s Landing.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Jaime scrutinized the map again, torn from a book at Winterfell dating to the reign of Aerys. He’d made all the adjustments he could, noting changes in the city walls and where green fire had exploded. The wildfire caches were all over the city, far more than he’d ever guessed remained. He moved the copper coins he was using to mark the Golden Company’s positions, trying to more accurately guess their numbers. All 20,000 weren’t outside the gates to meet the besieging army. More must be lying in wait within the city, where Lannister troops and Gold Cloaks would also be ready to meet any invaders.

He didn’t mind this kind of puzzle. Battle tactics, strategy, waging war, these were his strengths. At Winterfell, he was merely a knight in service of one commander. The others had listened when he spoke in their war council but he hadn’t had real power. At King’s Landing, he already knew that the allied armies would prevail. He needed only to turn the tide of battle so that Daenerys did not turn her wrath on the city. If he was going to approach Jon Snow, he needed a plan. 

To begin with, he needed to not be captured on sight. Having Arya Stark with him would help with that, but that would only happen if she came upstairs. He went to the window and checked the yard. No fresh tracks headed south, so at least they hadn’t left. 

The door opened behind him, and Arya came in, the Hound behind her carrying a flagon and a large cup. 

As the door closed behind them, Clegane thumped flagon and cup on the table beside Jaime’s map, making the coins slide across the parchment. “I want no part of this bloody bullshit,” he said bluntly. “I’m going to kill my brother.”

“You said you’d listen,” Arya reminded him.

“No, I said I’d drink and you’d listen,” he corrected, pouring himself a full cup of dark ale.

Her brow furrowed. “Couldn’t you find more cups?”

Clegane huffed. “Find your own fucking drink. This is mine.” He gulped down half the cup, glaring at her over the rim as he did it.

Arya rolled her eyes and peered at Jaime’s map. “This is the battle?”

Jaime came back to the table. He started pointing out the various forces and their positions at the start of the battle. “Greyjoy’s fleet is in the Blackwater here, sails furled. Daenerys flies in from somewhere outside the city. Dragonstone, I’d imagine. Cersei was a fool to allow her anywhere near it. Drogon turns the entire fleet to burning kindling in a handful of minutes.” Watching from the hills was just as terrible as it had been from the beach, but from above he could appreciate the scale of the destruction, and how fast it happened. 

“Then she flies over the Red Keep, through the city where the scorpions can’t reach her because they’re turned away. And Drogon obliterates the city gate from the inside. Fire and debris pour over the Golden Company, killing at least half their force. The rest are killed when your brother’s army rushes in.” It wasn’t as clean as it sounded, but it was a solid strategy.

Clegane nodded, listening despite what he’d said. “Fuck me, that’s it. They’ve won.”

Jaime moved some of the pieces around, tossing aside the Golden Company and moving the army inside the walls. “From what we could see—”

“We?” Arya asked, her brow furrowed.

Jaime glanced up at both of them. “You watched the battle with me, from the hills. Your idea, little wolf.”

Clegane poured himself more ale. “You two are giving me a bloody headache. I just want to kill my bastard fucking brother.”

And Clegane’s familial blood lust might come in handy, so Jaime threw him a bone. “I’ve seen you fight him. Many times.”

“Did I win?”

Jaime shrugged. “I’ve never seen either of you after, but I have a pesky habit of dying.” 

Arya tapped a fat gold dragon coin on the map. “What’s this?”

“That’s where she lands, after she burns every scorpion on the city walls. Snow’s army is near there, I’m not sure how close. The bells ring in surrender perhaps a minute after she lands.”

“But you said she burned the city,” Arya said, confusion in her tone.

Jaime moved the army’s tokens into the city, near the dragon. Near a bell tower. “She did. After the surrender.”

“Seven bloody hells,” Clegane swore. 

Arya’s fist thumped the table, making the coins scatter. “I told Jon. I told him he should be king.”

Jaime laughed. “You think a Northern bastard should sit the Iron Throne over the Targaryen heir, a fucking dragonrider.” He wasn’t fond of the girl, there was little of her brother in her and more of her father, but she had a clear claim. Snow did not.

Arya looked at him as if he was the stupidest man alive. It was, unfortunately, a familiar look. “Jon is Rhaegar Targaryen’s son.”

“That’s not possible. I saw Rhaenys and Aegon.” Their bodies were wrapped in bloody crimson cloaks and dropped before the Iron Throne like gifts for his father. And then he understood. “Lyanna Stark. But that still makes him a bastard.” A bastard complication that Daenerys wouldn’t appreciate. That certainly shed new light on the rumors he’d heard that Jon and Daenerys were lovers. Jaime grabbed a cup from a shelf over the hearth and poured a healthy measure of Clegane’s ale into it. The man started to protest, and Jaime threw him a look that stopped even Clegane. 

Arya shook her head. “Not a bastard. Sam Tarly found records of their marriage at the Citadel.” 

Jaime dropped into a chair and started to drink. He had been busy sneaking off to kill pyromancers while his father and Robert Baratheon decided if he would stay in the Kingsguard or take the black, but even he knew that Ned Stark and Howland Reed had ridden off in search of Lyanna Stark. And that Ned had somehow slain three members of the Kingsguard in Dorne, including Arthur Dayne. Jaime was the youngest and least trusted of all the Kingsguard. He was left behind with the king more as a hostage against his father’s ambitions than because of his skill with a blade. 

Honorable, insufferable Ned Stark, hiding the heir to the Iron Throne right under his good friend Robert Baratheon’s nose all those years. For once Jaime admired more than resented the man. 

“How long?” Jaime asked, deadly quiet. When Arya didn’t immediately answer, he added, “How long have you known?”

“After the battle.”

“I didn’t fucking know this,” Clegane pointed out, moving the flagon out of Jaime’s reach. “All you cunts squabbling over that bloody chair keep killing each other. Why keep track?”

Jaime ignored him. “If Jon Snow is the heir, then why is he supporting Daenerys’s claim?” The boy had been Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and King in the North. The more he thought of Jon Snow, the more he saw Rhaegar in him. Too sensitive, too weighed down by notions of duty and honor. Reckless and brave with a blade, better with words. Jon Snow was lucky the Stark looks ran true in him. Robert would have happily drowned the boy with his own hands like an unwanted kitten.

Arya rolled her eyes. “Jon’s in love with her.”

“With his aunt,” Jaime pointed out.

“You’re one to talk,” the Hound muttered.

Jaime shot him a look. Yes, yes, incestuous Kingslayer, defiler of the queen and usurper of the throne twice over. He was bloody tired of that refrain. “Does Daenerys know about this?”

“Yeah.” Arya crossed her arms, a scowl overtaking her features. “He told her before he told us.”

“Before or after the battle?”

“After. Why does this matter?”

“This,” he tapped the coin representing Jon Snow, “is a problem. A fucking immense problem. Daenerys wants vengeance and the throne. And with Ser Jorah and Missandei dead and my brother out of her favor, the only two left to provide her with counsel are a soldier who answers every problem with fire and blood and a rival for the bloody throne.”

“You don’t think Jon can stop her.” Arya sounded offended on her brother—cousin’s behalf, but wounded feelings weren’t going to win this.

“Worse. He wants to give her whatever she wants. At any cost. Trust me,” Jaime answered flatly.

Arya shook her head, but the Hound was chuckling grimly. He understood. 

“Jon’s not like that.” Even Arya didn’t seem sure of her words.

“Not like me? Perhaps Ned Stark instilled more honor in him than Tywin Lannister did in me, but Jon Snow set aside his own crown to bend the knee to that girl. He broke his Night’s Watch vows with her. He will do  _ anything  _ to give her what she wants.” 

Why couldn’t Bran send him back to that first trip to bloody Winterfell? He’d never push the thrice-damned boy. He’d sit Jon Snow down and tell him what happened to vows and oaths when you were surrounded by corruption and greed. How honor was worn away, flayed from you by a hundred smaller acts until you were nothing but bone and instinct and the worst, most grotesque acts seemed justified. To this day, he couldn't say if he would have killed Arya if he found her in the woods, that long ago day when her wolf bit Joffrey.  


But even as he thought it, Jaime knew he wouldn’t have done that. No, the man that rode to Winterfell in golden armor, white cloak streaming down his back, found Jon Snow’s idealism darkly amusing, and Bran Stark an obstacle to be removed, even as he hated the act itself. The uncanny boy’s words in the godswood were true. He needed to do all those despicable things to reach this point. 

“Jon has us,” Arya said fiercely, snapping him back to the present.

“I’m going after my brother. I don’t care what you two do,” the Hound piped up before pouring the rest of the flagon into his cup. He was welcome to it. Jaime needed no more. This situation was bitter enough. 

Jaime turned his attention to Arya. “You told me, when we watched Daenerys burning the city, that she wasn’t mad. She flew with purpose, leaving no area of the city unscathed. You thought she could still be dissuaded from burning everything.” 

Arya looked at the map again. “Would Cersei surrender if we threatened you?” 

Jaime winced. “No. But if we can end it on the walls, Daenerys has no excuse to burn the city.” 

“Do I get to kill my brother?” the Hound cut in.

“No,” Arya and Jaime answered at the same time.

“Bollocks to that,” he huffed.

Jaime scratched his chin through his beard. “Can you get me to Snow?” 

Arya nodded. 

“Then let’s try it. What do we have to lose?”

 

* * *

  
“This better bloody work,” the Hound growled in his ear as he shoved Jaime, shackled, to the front of the column, where he could be seen from the walls.

All the trees had been stripped from the area around the gates, used to make the scorpions bristling from the walls high above him. Jaime squinted into the sun. He wanted to say that it didn’t matter, they could always try again, but Jon Snow and the Unsullied commander Grey Worm could hear them. 

Their plan had proceeded better than expected. Jon agreed to use Jaime as bait to get Cersei to the city walls, and somehow Arya convinced Jon to let her be the one to deliver the message to the Red Keep. Clegane had wanted to go with her, but she said he was too recognizable. They’d sent Jaime’s gold hand as proof that they had him. It was actually a relief not the wear the thrice-damned thing. 

Daenerys was to begin her assault on the Iron Fleet only when Cersei arrived on the walls, but Jaime wasn’t certain she would wait. She hadn’t waited to join the battle at Winterfell, spoiling their plans and ultimately costing the lives of hundreds of men despite their victory. Not that the dragon queen would ever admit that.

“There she is. I admit, I doubted she’d come,” Jon said quietly from behind him.

Jaime looked and found the Mountain easily enough. And then, yes, there was Cersei, a silver circlet on her head, vivid red gown and gold jewels glinting in the sun. He’d never seen Daenerys wear a crown.  _ Any man who must say, “I am the king,” is no king, _ his father used to say. Cersei proclaimed her reign with every haughty look, every knife-edged smile. 

Cersei scanned the Northern troops, a smaller group than originally planned. The rest were hidden behind the hills and waiting near the other city gates. Their forces looked small before the might of the Golden Company. Purposefully. She smiled, a cat with the cream satisfaction lighting her features, and finally deigned to look at Jaime. 

Jon took his arm and pushed him forward. Jaime tried to look chastened. If she surrendered now, rang the bells, perhaps, against all odds, Daenerys might allow her exile, under guard at Casterly Rock or across the Narrow Sea. It was unlikely, but better than her odds staying in the castle. 

“Where is she?” Cersei asked. Her voice rang out between the two armies, despite her distance. She always knew how to command attention. 

“Dragonstone. Queen Daenerys awaits word of your surrender,” Jon answered, sounding so much like his sire it unnerved Jaime. If only Cersei knew who this pup was, she’d turn her scorpions on him, heedless whether Jaime died in the process. 

Cersei laughed in genuine amusement. “And why would I do that?”

“To save your brother,” Snow replied, pushing Jaime to his knees. He unsheathed his sword, the Valyrian steel trembling in his grip. The Mormont sword Longclaw, of all things. Jaime’s own blade hung from Ser Davos Seaworth’s hip, ready if this went poorly and Jaime had need of it. 

The Mountain shifted closer to his queen. The Hound growled low under his breath behind Jaime. 

“Jaime was dead the minute he turned his back on me. Take his head. It’s nothing to me.” Her words dripped poison, but it wasn’t a bluff. Even Jaime could see that from here. She stood there, waiting for Snow to make good on his threat.

But then the explosions began in the distance. They were too far from the water to see what was happening, but Jaime knew. Daenerys was destroying the fleet. It wouldn’t take long.

“What do I do?” Snow muttered under his breath. 

Jaime ducked his head so she wouldn’t see him speak. “I’ll run,” he reminded the boy. They’d planned for this, playing for time. 

And Jaime scrambled up, running, weaving as he went, and the Hound gave chase. Clegane had longer legs, caught up quickly, and dragged Jaime back while he struggled. His arm was nearly yanked from its socket, his boots kicking up dust as he landed back at Snow’s feet. Jaime looked up and saw the disgust on Cersei’s face. 

The explosions continued while Jon pretended to ready himself to strike off Jaime’s head. He only stopped when Cersei turned her back to them. 

Just in time to watch Drogon rise over the towers of the Red Keep and dive over the city, straight toward the gates where Cersei stood. 

They had seconds to run, but she didn’t. The men around her scattered like leaves on the wind, but Cersei stood her ground, the Mountain at her side. Just before the dragon reached her, she turned, and looked over her shoulder. Her eyes met Jaime’s. And she knew what he’d done. 

Then the dragon opened its jaws, and the gates were consumed by a massive fireball. Cersei, the Mountain, and much of the Golden Company gone with them. 

Snow’s army roared, and soldiers started pouring past him. Jaime got unsteadily to his feet, barely noticing as Davos unlocked his shackles and pressed Widow’s Wail into his hand. He should be wailing, should be grief-stricken. And he wasn’t.

Jaime stood there longer than he should have. He wasn’t armored, hadn’t given much thought to the fight that would follow the queen’s death. The city should surrender. Soon. And Daenerys knew Cersei was dead, knew she’d won. 

A hand on his arm brought Jaime from his reverie. The sounds of clashing steel reached his ears, screams, crackling flame. High above, Daenerys was laying waste to the scorpions atop the city walls. Jaime turned and found Tyrion standing there, looking relieved and concerned. 

“Are you going in?” he asked. 

Jaime nodded. “I should.” The Lannister soldiers might surrender more readily to him than to Jon Snow. “Thank you for your help, with Snow.” Between Tyrion and Arya, Jon had seen the wisdom of their plan far faster than Jaime had anticipated. 

Tyrion smiled, squeezed Jaime’s arm and released him. “Go. End this.”

Jaime nodded and rushed through the broken gates, mindful of the fire and corpses and fleeing smallfolk. Staying to the middle of the column he was able to avoid much of the fighting, though he lent his sword to the fight when needed. 

Jaime found himself just behind Snow, Grey Worm, and Seaworth when they reached the first company of Lannister troops. A bell tower stood nearby. Good. If these were men of the Golden Company, they might have resisted. The two armies stood facing each other, waiting. Jaime stepped out from behind Snow, and saw recognition in the eyes of some of the Lannister men. 

“Lay down your arms,” he said. “The queen is dead. No more blood need be spilled today.” 

The first few men dropped their swords as if they were burning, and the rest followed suit. 

Beside him, Grey Worm snorted derisively. Unsullied did not surrender. Unsullied didn’t have families or homes, either.

Around them, smallfolk started calling for the bells to be rung. There was no one to order it, but it must be done to signal the surrender. Tension coiled around Jaime’s spine as Daenerys landed her dragon on top of a building nearby. He could see the fury in her face, but Arya had been right, Daenerys wasn’t mad. 

A flash of movement in the bell tower. Dark hair, dark clothes. Jaime had worried when Arya didn’t return from delivering her message. He’d half expected Cersei to haul her up on the battlements and butcher her in front of Jon Snow. But the girl was wily. Perhaps she was the one up there now, ringing the bells. 

The sound echoed across the city, and was answered by other bells. 

Jaime sighed in relief, and he saw Snow’s shoulders relax. 

And then Daenerys took off. She’d scarcely cleared the first street before she opened fire. 

“No,” Jon Snow breathed. 

A spear suddenly protruded from the first soldier who’d dropped his sword, and Jaime turned to see who’d thrown it. 

Grey Worm was beside him, his spear missing, his mouth twisted in a snarl.

“Why—” Jaime only got out that one word before searing pain stole his breath. He looked down and found Grey Worm’s dagger buried in his side. 

“For Missandei,” the Unsullied hissed, wrenched his blade free, and let Jaime slip to his knees. 

The street erupted around them, but Jaime saw little but Jon Snow’s shocked, horrified face, surrounded by unbridled carnage.  


Grey Worm slit his throat a moment later.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

The soldiers dropped their swords, the clatter against the cobbles echoing up the street. High above, the bells rang immediately.

Jaime tensed, waiting. Arya had done her part, now it was up to Snow.

Jon strode forward, into the gap between his army and the Lannister soldiers, his eyes locked on Daenerys perched high above. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were on the Red Keep, where that accursed throne waited unoccupied. “The city is yours, my queen,” Jon called, his voice ringing in the quiet street.

Her eyes narrowed as she turned them on him, taking in the scene. The Lannister men weren’t even looking at her, a few were beginning to slip away from their company, into the shadows and alleys. The Unsullied and Northerners behind Jaime began to mutter among themselves. The air crackled with tension.

“And yet the men are not,” the dragon queen called back, no fury in her voice. Just disappointment. She wasn’t Aerys now, she was Tywin Lannister, and Jaime’s blood froze in his veins.

“Kneel,” he cried urgently, rushing toward the soldiers. “Damn you, kneel before your queen.”

But she was already taking off, fire spewing into the streets around them, and this time Grey Worm’s spear struck Jaime in the back.

 

* * *

  

“What does it feel like?” Arya asked, her dark eyes watching him avidly.

“Like a fucking spear in the back,” Jaime snapped. “My back was on fire and I was choking on my own blood, face down on the cobbles. Not my favorite death.”

“Which one was?” the Hound asked, sloshing more ale into his cup.

“Rocks. It’s fast,” Jaime answered tersely. He’d had plenty of time to think about it, during the long rides from Winterfell.

Both the Hound and Arya seemed to think about that for a moment before nodding in agreement. Jaime didn’t want to know what they talked about when they were alone. Neither were particularly talkative.

“So you tell them to kneel when they drop their swords, and you stay away from Grey Worm,” Arya said, as if that settled the matter.

“If I was armored, I’d be fine,” Jaime grumbled. He couldn’t wear armor, or Cersei wouldn’t believe him a prisoner. Especially not in the Stark armor he’d worn during the Battle of Winterfell. Robb Stark’s old armor, as he’d learned later. He was lucky no one had slit his throat for wearing it.  

“If you still had your hand, you mean,” the Hound corrected with a bark of laughter.

Jaime’s right hand lay on table. He’d grown accustomed to not wearing it much at Winterfell, and wearing it again chaffed, particularly when he rode all day.

Arya glanced at the gold hand dismissively. “That thing’s bloody useless. Should’ve had Gendry make you something decent.” A shadow crossed her face, there and gone in an instant. She wasn’t entirely indifferent to the bastard’s affections.

“Next time I have a few days at Winterfell, I’ll ask,” Jaime drawled, every word dripping with sarcasm. He had plenty of time to think on the road, but very little time at Winterfell, otherwise he missed his chance to change anything.

“It throws off your balance.” At his curious look, she added, “I saw you fight. At Winterfell. A lot.”

“I lived,” he said wearily. “We all did. Enough of us, at any rate. That’s more than I’d expected.”

“I could teach you,” she offered suddenly. “I fight with my left.”

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been fighting since long before you were born, little wolf.”

“With your right hand.” Arya’s smile was more than a little cruel. “With your left, you’re slow. Less controlled. Your body still wants to wield that pretty sword with two hands, to lead with your right.”

“I’ve been training with Brienne since the battle. I’m better,” he said sourly, though everything she said was true.

“Not good enough to evade one eunuch,” the Hound pointed out, smirking behind his cup.

“I trained with Brienne, too. She fights clean.” She understood what Jaime did, that fighting honorably could get you killed.

“Bit my fucking ear off,” the Hound reminded them with a grimace.

“You just want to kill me,” Jaime protested. She was a bloodthirsty little thing, and he had after all injured her father. That felt very long ago now.

“If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you at the Twins.” She said it matter of factly, like she’d considered it.

“I missed you by a fortnight,” Jaime reminded her.

She smiled unpleasantly. “There was a feast when you escorted my uncle from Riverrun. You were sitting with that sellsword, and he teased you that the serving wenches weren’t blonde enough for you. I thought he was talking about Cersei, but perhaps I was wrong.”

Jaime blanched. “I didn’t see you.”

She shrugged and sipped her own ale. “You wouldn’t have.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” She should have, if only to wound Cersei from afar.

“You loathed Walder Frey and made no secret of it. You didn’t treat the serving girls like whores. And by then I’d heard that Lady Brienne took Sansa to Winterfell as she’d told me she would. Cersei certainly didn’t give her a Lannister sword.”

No, Cersei had seen that sword and known immediately who’d given it to her. The look she’d given him then could have melted the Dragonpit.

“We can spar while we travel south. At least it will make the journey more interesting,” Jaime conceded. They might not remember the trip south, but Jaime did. Their long silences and occasional wordless conversations did little to keep Jaime out of his own head.

The next night, Arya told him about her water dancing lessons with the former First Sword of Braavos. She took great delight in taking away his sword and replacing it with a heavy oak practice sword she’d taken from the inn. “This is too heavy,” he griped. “I’ll drop it.”

She grinned. “Your sword is part of your arm. You can’t drop part of your arm.” She even put on a bit of a Braavosi accent.

“How long were you there?” Jaime asked curiously.

“Long enough.” Her dark eyes glinted with amusement, but she was deadly serious about her swordplay. She changed his stance, pushed him to study his opponents more, anticipate and move with greater speed and agility.

Jaime fought both the Hound and Arya, taking turns so he could see the differences in their techniques. Clegane enjoyed mocking Jaime’s diminished skill, reminding him of every melee they’d fought in the old days, and how easily the Kingslayer would have killed the man Jaime had become.

Sparring with her was nothing like the crashing, brutal battles he was used to. She fought with her own slim sword. She called it Needle, and it pricked him more often than Jaime liked to admit. When they’d crossed into the Crownlands, Arya took his wooden sword away and let him wield Widow’s Wail again.

“I could hurt you,” he warned her.

She laughed. “Please, try.” She bowed to him, mocking and exaggerated. “Shall we dance?”

The Hound set himself off to the side and watched avidly as they faced off with live steel. Arya wasn’t even trying to kill him, not really. Jaime grew winded, his arm beginning to ache after a few minutes. He was uncomfortably reminded of his fight on the bridge with Brienne, that horrible feeling growing in his chest when he’d realized he wasn’t going to beat her.

And then Arya slashed at his side, blood trickling into his breeches. Her chin tipped up in challenge.

Jaime went at her with everything he had.

Arya danced away, stepping out of his reach, under his guard, pricking his thigh. “Dead,” she said lightly.

They circled again, this time Jaime missed striking her arm by half a second, but she pricked his shoulder before he could get away. “Dead,” she said again, a laugh in her voice.

Jaime focused on that taunt in her eyes, the sound of her feet sliding over the sandy ground. Finally, he landed a glancing blow to her right arm.

She didn’t even look at the wound, pivoting around him to slap the flat of her blade against the back of his thigh. It stung but drew no more blood. “Syrio started every lesson the same way,” she said easily.

Jaime growled and spun to face her. She was already gone, and she’d slapped him again, this time with her open palm across his arm. “What did he say?”

She grinned, and Clegane started to chuckle behind Jaime. He’d clearly heard this story. “Do you pray, Ser Jaime?”

“No.” The Warrior was the only god who’d ever interested him, but Jaime had seen too much of the world to put his faith in anything he couldn’t see.

She circled around, lazily, not even trying to land a blow. “I used to pray to the Old Gods and the New. He told me that there is only one god, and that is death. In Braavos I learned all his faces. Do you know what we say to death, Ser Jaime?”

Jaime lunged for her, and her blade flashed under his chin.

She smiled savagely. “Not today.”

For half a second, he didn’t understand. And then he tasted blood, and he couldn’t breathe. He crumpled to the sand as she turned away.

 

* * *

  
“What did you do to him?” the Hound asked, picking up Jaime’s arm and letting it drop bonelessly.

“Would you stop doing that?” Jaime snapped.

The Hound chuckled. “He’s like a puppet with his strings cut.”

Arya shrugged. “Sword through the spine. He can’t move.”

“I can move,” Jaime protested, struggling to prove his point. Failing. He’d lasted barely ten minutes this time, and really wanted to remind her that he’d be facing Westerosi troops and Unsullied, not Braavosi. Even the Golden Company fought more like the Lannister troops than like anyone in Essos.

Her head tilted as she looked him over. “No, you can’t.”

“Why would you do that?” the Hound asked, picking up Jaime’s right foot and dropping it.

“Interrogation,” Arya said simply. “Never had a chance to try it out before.” She leaned over him and poked him with her blade. “We should start over.”

He couldn’t feel a damn thing below his face. Jaime growled in frustration. “Fine. Do it.”

 

* * *

  
Cersei’s face was still burned in his mind as he fought his way to the front of the column. This time he stood on Snow’s right, beside Ser Davos.

The Lannister men looked just as nervous as Jaime felt when he stepped forward, between the two armies. Crimson and gold glinted from their armor, light flashing on their upraised swords, but their eyes showed fear, darting uneasily to the monster crouched on the tiles above them. A vengeful goddess riding into battle scaled in black. They were ready to surrender. The question was whether Daenerys would accept it, whether their submission would be enough.

“Lay down your arms,” he commanded, for the third time. His voice carried, through the men, up to Daenerys. “The queen is dead.” He saw Cersei again, wreathed in flame, before the fire consumed her. “The dragon queen offers mercy to those who bend the knee. Now.”

Daenerys had offered no such thing. She’d been informed of their plan by raven this morning, but they’d had no reply.

The men started to drop their swords, and one knelt, facing Jaime and Jon Snow.

“No, you fool. Kneel to her.” Jaime pointed at the dragon, and the woman perched on it. Why did she need a throne when she could seat herself on Drogon?

Swords clattered to the street, and the bells began to toll. Men dropped to their knees.

Jaime glanced over his shoulder. Grey Worm was watching his queen, not the men on the street. When he looked back, one man still stood in the middle of the company, defiant, sword in hand.

The soldier pointed his sword directly at Jaime. “Traitor,” he spat.

Jaime heard the flap of wings.

“No, damn you,” Jaime growled, moving forward to take the man down himself.

But it was too late. Grey Worm’s spear flew, the man fell, and Daenerys took off. The dragon roared, people screamed, and chaos erupted around him.

Jaime surged into the fight, relieved to find that training with Arya had improved his agility and reflexes, if not his strength. Smoke filled the air. He should drop his sword, let someone kill him, start over. Find a new path.

But his blood ran hot, the absolute certainty coursing through him that this was where he belonged, on the field of battle, not sitting quietly in the North, awaiting ravens and trusting his fate to others.

The smokey air filled with screams and grunts, and blood splattered him from a man that fell to his left. Grey Worm, for once, ignored him.

The haze cleared for a moment, and Jaime saw Jon’s stunned and horrified face as he pulled a Stark soldier away from a cowering young girl in a doorway. The soldier raised his sword, and Jon ran him through.

This was what Jaime had seen in his vision. Not a fight against the Lannister soldiers. The allied troops, slaughtering the smallfolk of King’s Landing while the dragon queen burned the city around them.

A flash of red at his right caught his eye, and Jaime pivoted quickly to raise his sword. Too late.

A bloody face greeted him, Lannister helm askew. A sword plunged through his leather jacket, into his chest. The soldier pulled his sword free, fire spreading through Jaime’s chest. He couldn’t even scream, couldn’t do a thing as he dropped to his knees, Widow’s Wail falling to the cobbles. The soldier dropped his own sword and grabbed Jaime’s instead.

Blood bubbled over Jaime’s lips as he slumped to the street.

 

* * *

 

Jaime woke choking on blood that was no longer there. He shuddered and heaved himself out of bed, gulping in hasty breaths to stop the bile rising in his throat.

He eased back to sit on the edge of the bed, balling his hand in a fist to stop it shaking.

The flickering firelight, their swords hanging side by side from the back of a chair, the pile of furs that kept the cold away…. Winterfell felt like a dream, a sweet interlude between terrors.

Hands touched his shoulders, and Jaime startled. Brienne’s warm, naked skin pressed against his back. “Nightmare?” she asked, gently stroking his right arm.

Jaime nodded. She was accustomed to this. Since they’d shared a bed, he’d fought the dead more than once in his dreams, sometimes wights, sometimes his father and his children, and sometimes Rhaegar and his Kingsguard brothers.  

Her lips came to rest on his shoulder, her sleep-mussed hair teasing the side of his neck. “I’m listening, if you want to talk.”

 _This._ This softness and care, not her maidenhead or the pleasure they found in each other’s bodies, was the gift Brienne had given him when she took him into her bed. This was what Jaime craved, even as it reminded him how fucking unworthy he was to receive it.

“I went to King’s Landing,” he said dully. There was no point in lying. She thought it was only a dream, and she would forget this the next time, though he never would. “I offered myself to Jon Snow as bait for a trap. I stood beneath the walls and waited for her to come for me.” He stopped, trying to sort each horror from the one that followed. The subtle changes, the manner and timing of his death; and the things that never altered, Cersei’s refusal to barter for his life.

Her body stiffened, but Brienne didn’t speak, just waited.

“She told him to kill me. And then Drogon burned the city gate from under her. She looked at me, and she knew I’d betrayed her.”

“Jaime.” She rearranged her legs somehow without letting him go, until she was holding him from behind, thighs around his hips, arms around his waist.

He meant to stop there. If he hadn’t seen Cersei die at least thirty times, he might have. “What’s one more betrayal? I betrayed her when I sent you to protect Sansa, and I never stopped. I told my father I would leave the Kingsguard, and I freed Tyrion. She wanted the Red Fork choked with Tully corpses, and I only buried the Blackfish. She wanted Olenna Tyrell tortured and I killed her painlessly in her own home. And then I left her and went north to join her enemies in battle.”

“Do you want me to punish you?” Brienne asked softly. “Turn away, strike you, tell you you’re hateful or worthless?”

Jaime twisted in her arms so he could see her face. Her eyes were luminous in the firelight, her lips trembling. “You should.” He was suddenly very aware of their nakedness, the scent of sex still rising from her soft skin.

Brienne started to pull away, then stopped. Her hands moved up to cup his face, her mouth set in a stubborn line. “I’m not her.”

Jaime took a shaky breath. “No, you’re not.” He hadn’t let himself touch her in a long time, not the way he wanted to.

When she leaned in, slow and hesitant, to kiss him, he couldn’t make himself pull away.  

 


	9. Chapter 9

Morning found Jaime in the godswood, tucking the furs around a still and unresponsive Bran Stark. No new visions had come when he touched boy or strangely warm tree trunk, though Jaime could sorely use more direction.

He understood much of what he’d been shown when he touched the tree last time. Cersei’s wildfire. Jon Snow fighting his own men in the streets of King’s Landing. The bells ringing. Daenerys burning the city. He’d begun to suspect the girl on the horse might be Arya, though he’d never lived long enough to see her escape the city. He hoped she did, no matter how many times she’d rather gleefully killed him.

But why had Bran showed him killing Aerys? Jaime had thought it went with the wildfire, and that it meant Cersei must die. He hadn’t killed her himself, not personally. He’d left that up to Drogon. But Jaime couldn’t see how he himself killing his sister would make any difference in the battle. Daenerys was the one who decided to burn the city. She never even saw Cersei unless his sister was standing on the city walls, and even then Cersei’s death didn’t alter her course.

He could see only two more choices to close out this path entirely. Kill Cersei himself or send a raven informing Daenerys about the wildfire. Would she risk Drogon if she knew of the trap Cersei had laid? Jaime knew Drogon would survive, but Daenerys did not. Would her caution with her last remaining dragon be enough to buy half a million lives? Jaime doubted it, but he must try. After that, he had no choice but to try to stop Daenerys before the battle.

The boy in the first vision had said he would know when it was done. Jaime suspected he would only know for sure when he died, and stayed dead. So he would never know, not really. He’d never seen anything between dying and waking again, and he’d never really believed there was anything beyond the veil of death but quiet, endless darkness, a blissful lack of fear and pain and worry.

“Ser Jaime, step away from my brother.” Lady Sansa’s voice was sharp as a lash, snapping him out of his reverie.

Jaime backed away, understanding in an instant that she’d come upon him standing over her crippled brother. “He was like this when I arrived,” he said quickly, pulling the note from his pocket.

Lady Sansa took the note and glanced at it before giving it back. Her brow smoothed. “My apologies,” she said stiffly.

“No, you needn’t. I understand.” Even so, Jaime was glad that Brienne was not here, trapped between the two of them. He’d left her sleeping in their bed, her face unlined and peaceful in slumber, without the weight of duty pressing her generous mouth into a hard line.

A smile curved Sansa’s lips, but it didn’t touch her eyes, two chips of blue ice in her lovely face. “Do you? I don’t think you do.”

Jaime wanted to bite back at her, but contained the impulse. “Perhaps not. Tyrion never had a normal life to lose, never had a mother to sit by his sickbed. My father once told him that he should have drowned Tyrion in the Sunset Sea at birth.”

Lady Sansa’s frigid demeanor thawed, and her gaze fell to Bran. “He was fortunate to have you.”

Jaime brushed snow from his cloak and said nothing. He didn’t owe his brother’s former wife any tales of their childhood.

“I am surprised to find you here,” she ventured.

“As I said, your brother summoned me,” Jaime reminded her. The sun was just rising over the walls of the castle, filtering through the leaves and needles above them. This place, however forbidding, was beautiful in a way that Casterly Rock was not. The godswood still felt wild, even within the castle walls, while the Rock’s gardens were shaped and pruned and perfect to suit Tywin’s rigid expectations.

“No, I meant at Winterfell. I expected to find you gone today.” So she had meant to drive him away, with her reminder of Cersei. As if Jaime wasn’t keenly aware of the consequences of his choice to ride north, and his choice to submit to the decision to keep him there.

“I should be,” he conceded.

“For Cersei,” Sansa said bitterly.

“In part.” No point in lying. She would see through it anyway.

“Does it amuse you? Toying with Lady Brienne’s affections?”

Jaime’s eyes locked with hers. “Brienne is not an amusement.” His voice was a growl, but he held back the tirade he wanted to make, just as he’d held back from murdering every Northern shit who thought he was clever calling Brienne the Kingslayer’s whore behind her back.

“No, she is the heir of her House, the last of her line.” A direct hit, again. He should have wed her, Jaime knew that. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that his name would be a noose around her throat rather than offering any protection.

Lady Sansa knew well that Brienne was running out of time to wed and produce heirs, yet she accepted Brienne’s continued service rather than sending her home to her precious island and the father who’d let Brienne go fight for Renly in the first place. Jaime sheathed his claws once again, the effort costing him dearly. “Have we not been discreet enough for you, my lady? You’ve only to ask and I’m sure Brienne would cast me aside at your command.”

Sansa seemed taken aback by his bitterness. “I assumed you were accustomed to discretion.”

Jaime did laugh at that, but only because he had been so obvious that first night, their discretion thereafter mattered not at all. He’d been so nervous he had drunk a bit too much wine, and he’d dropped the wine cups at least twice, making enough noise to wake the dead. And then when he got inside her chambers, he couldn’t even manage his laces, which was humiliating in the extreme. But she’d just gotten on with things, as she always had, never mind the idiocy pouring from his mouth.

He glanced about the godswood, trying to cool his temper. “Yes, how fortunate I am, to attach myself yet again to a woman unwilling to show me a scrap of affection where anyone might see it. She is so desperate to please you, my lady, that her choice of bedmate not meeting your approval pains her.”

“Affection? You have her _loyalty,_ even when it costs her, and that is worth far more,” Sansa snapped. “Daenerys would have happily set her dragons on you, and I wouldn’t have objected.”

 _Fuck loyalty,_ he heard Brienne's frustrated voice, grabbing his arm in the Dragonpit and opening herself up to speculation from all sides of the conflict. Jaime scrubbed a hand over his beard, his bitterness swiftly ebbing away. None of this was Brienne’s fault. And he understood just how poorly it reflected on both Brienne and Sansa that Lady Stark’s sworn sword was fucking the Kingslayer. His troubles were all his own making, as usual. “I’m sure Daenerys would be happy to remedy that. She might not laugh like Aerys, but she’d enjoy it.”

Sansa was silent a moment longer than was comfortable. “Ramsay used to laugh too, when he tricked people, when he hurt them. He liked to have an audience.”

“So did Aerys. I was there, the day he tortured and murdered your uncle and your grandfather. So was half the court.” Jaime hesitated, and decided he’d have no better opportunity. “He had a taste for wildfire, as does Cersei. I fear she means to use it against the dragon queen.”

Sansa’s eyes widened. “Does Daenerys know this?”

“She wouldn’t believe a word I said,” Jaime reminded her, then realized that didn’t matter. She didn’t need to believe _him_. “I mean to go south, but I might not get there in time. Would you send a raven to Dragonstone, telling Snow about the wildfire? I would write to Tyrion, but he was not in Daenerys’s favor when they left. Lord Varys might be able to confirm it. His little birds still fly about the city.” If Lord Varys lived when the raven arrived.

Sansa stepped around Jaime, graceful in the same way her mother was, but far more lovely than Catelyn at her age. To think, if Aerys hadn’t interfered, Tywin had intended him to wed Lysa Tully. Sansa wouldn’t exist at all, Lady Catelyn wed to Brandon rather than Ned and Jaime not the Kingslayer at all. Another life. Another world.

She knelt in the snow, touched her brother’s face, made sure his cold-reddened hands were covered in the furs. “I will send your raven, on one condition.”

“I won’t bend the knee. Not to you, not to Daenerys.” The denial came automatically, before she could even ask.

Yet Jaime stepped forward and offered his hand to help her up as she began to rise. She smirked at that, her eyes intent on his face. “No, you will take Lady Brienne with you.”

He pulled his hand away as quickly as he could, shaking his head. “No. She’ll be safe here. As will you.”

Sansa’s chin rose, and despite being several inches shorter than him, she was clearly looking down on him. A neat trick, one she must’ve learned from Cersei. “I’m not asking. If you want your raven, Lady Brienne goes with you to King’s Landing.”

“My lady? Jaime?” Brienne’s voice startled them both. She stood a short distance away, armored and distant as she always was outside their chambers. Yet it wasn’t like her to use just his first name in Sansa’s presence.

Sansa began issuing commands with ease, knowing they would be obeyed. “Lady Brienne, you and Ser Jaime will depart for King’s Landing today. Ser Jaime has urgent information for my brother, and his presence may be of use to end the war.”

Brienne’s eyes widened, startled by this turn of events, but she was too loyal to question her orders. “I will tell Podrick to prepare.”

Lady Sansa held up a hand. “Podrick will stay with me. You might consider knighting him before you leave. His service against the army of the dead should be sufficient to warrant that.”

Brienne nodded, but her eyes darted between Jaime and Sansa in confusion. Reluctantly, she turned and left the godswood.

“If she dies, it will be on your head,” Jaime growled, watching her go.

“No, it will be on yours. Protect her life with yours, if need be. You've done it before,” Sansa replied, and left the godswood without looking at him again.

 

* * *

  
  
Jaime rushed through the courtyard of the inn, squinting at the position of the sun and hoping that Arya and the Hound would already be here. He wished that just once he wouldn’t have to explain everything to them, but much of the plan could be communicated later. Tonight he only needed to get them all moving south together.

He nearly sighed in relief to see Arya’s small dark form at their usual table in the inn’s dining room. The Hound was seated across from her already, and both were eating. Jaime rushed through the room as quickly as he could without drawing unwanted attention and sat beside Arya, unsurprised to find a knife swiftly pressed against his ribs.

She didn’t move the blade when she glanced up and saw who he was. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

Jaime glanced back at the door to make sure Brienne wasn’t there yet. “What happened to you at Winterfell is happening to me. We need to go south together in the morning to speak to Jon Snow. I’ll rent two rooms tonight, and fill you in on the plan later tonight.” The door opened. “There’s Brienne. She doesn’t know any of this, so please don’t tell her.”

“Do you expect us to just believe you?” Arya asked, poking him more forcefully without drawing blood. Her face was pale, she already believed him, but she needed a push to go through this all again. He didn’t blame her.

Jaime leaned in as close as he could without actually getting stabbed. “What do we say to the god of death? Not today.”

With obvious reluctance, Arya removed her knife from his ribs.

The Hound, his ale cup raised to his lips, started snickering. “What the fuck makes you think we’d help you?”

Jaime ground his teeth and wished he had more time. “Because Daenerys is going to burn King’s Landing, and then neither of you will get your revenge. Understood?”

The Hound’s gaze moved up, and Jaime knew without looking that Brienne was behind them. “Are you going to bite off the other ear this time?”

“Not unless you plan to sell Arya to the queen,” Brienne answered drily.  

“Sit, Brienne. These two were just agreeing to ride south with us,” Jaime said pointedly.

“Were they? Lady Sansa would be glad to know we’d found her sister,” Brienne said with a look at Arya. Sansa had been frustrated to find her sister gone, but Arya was not a child to be locked in her room.

“I wasn’t lost,” Arya said sourly. “Sansa needn’t worry about me.”

Brienne’s sat with them just as a serving girl came by and Jaime ordered them dinner and ale. “Lady Arya—”

“I’m no lady,” the girl corrected. She reminded Jaime of Brienne when they first met, when she fought any reference to her womanhood.

“You left well before us. How is it that you are still in the Riverlands if you were bound for King’s Landing?” Brienne asked.

Clegane barked a laugh and pushed up his sleeve. Healing bite marks spanned his forearm. “We ran into a bit of trouble with some wolves.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “I told you to let me deal with them.”

“You could have just mentioned the big bitch was your pet bloody direwolf,” he countered.

“You didn’t ask, just jumped in front of me for no good reason.”

“I thought I was saving you,” he protested.

“No, you were getting yourself eaten,” Arya snapped back.

Jaime leaned over and whispered in Brienne’s ear, “Remind you of anyone?”

Her eyes widened. “They’re nothing like us,” she whispered back.

“Neither of them are in chains, and I think Clegane’s feelings are rather more paternal, but otherwise…” Jaime trailed off.

“What are you whispering about?” Arya snapped, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Nothing, little wolf,” Jaime said easily. “Just remembering our last trip through the Riverlands together. I still had two hands and Lady Brienne was leading me about on a leash before I stole her sword and tried to kill her.”

Clegane laughed aloud at that. “So she beat you, too?”

Jaime looked at Brienne, a smile curling his lips without his permission. “Do you want to tell the story or shall I?”

“You’ll lie about it,” Brienne scoffed. “You were nowhere near as good as I’d expected with your reputation.”

“You wound me, my lady. But go ahead, tell them your version.”

Hours later, Jaime and Clegane sat by their fire, waiting. The rooms he’d gotten were small and shabby, with a single bed. Jaime knew without asking that Clegane had no intention of sleeping on the floor. The Hound had spent the last hour asking Jaime about the Mountain’s current monstrous form and how similar he was to the wights they’d slaughtered. Belatedly Jaime wondered what Qyburn had done with the wight’s hand he took from the Dragonpit, and if the plans he’d mentioned for Ellaria had included making her into another Mountain.

The door clicked open softly and Arya slipped in. She looked pricklier than usual, and tired. “Are you going to tell us what in seven hells is going on?”

Jaime smiled ruefully. “Of course, my lady. Three days from now, Daenerys Targaryen is going to destroy King’s Landing, and for some reason I haven’t quite discerned, your brother chose me to relive the battle over and over until I get it right. Sound familiar?”

Arya blanched. “How many times have we done this?”

“Too many. Sit, little wolf. I won’t bore you with what hasn’t worked, but the plan as it is won’t take long to explain.”

“Why isn’t your woman in on this?” Clegane asked.

Jaime took a gulp of ale that hurt as it went down his throat. It left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, too. “When I woke up this time, I may have told her about our last attempt. I said it was a dream.”

“So when we tell Jon Snow the plan, she’s going to think you came up with it in a dream.” Clegane slapped his knee and started laughing until ale slopped out of his cup.

“Would you be quiet? You’ll wake her up,” Jaime hissed.

Arya looked thoughtful. “We could keep her out of the meeting, but once we actually put the plan in action, she’s going to notice it’s the same. She might interfere.”

“I was hoping we could leave her behind in camp. To guard Tyrion or something.” Even as he said, Jaime knew it wouldn’t work.

Arya shook her head. “No, we should just kill you now.”

“Why do you always look so happy to do this?” Jaime complained, watching her pull out her knife.

“What’s the matter, you still afraid to die?” Clegane mocked him with a sneer.

“You die sixty, seventy times, and then we’ll talk,” Jaime snapped.

The Hound didn’t get a chance to taunt him again. Arya was very good with her knives.

 


	10. Chapter 10

The young Lady Stark was just as stubborn as her mother. Jaime supposed it had kept the girl alive, through his family’s schemes and Littlefinger’s plots and the horrors the Boltons had visited on her. 

“You wanted me to leave. I’m leaving, and the gods know I won’t live long enough to come back. I’ll send the bloody raven myself. Brienne stays here,” Jaime told the girl for what felt like the hundredth time.

“If there’s a chance Jon is walking into a trap, I will warn him about it. But Lannisters lie, Ser Jaime. You could fight beside us a thousand times, and I would still never trust you.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes burning with fury and her voice held all the bitterness she’d largely held back when Brienne was around to hear it.

And suddenly Jaime understood. “But if Brienne goes with me, you don’t have to trust me. You only have to trust her.”

She nodded. “I don’t understand the power you have over her, or the power she has over you. But I trust her to honor her vow to me.”

“You should be worried about the dragon queen’s power over Jon Snow. Brienne will never love me more than her honor. Can you say the same about your brother?” Jaime nearly called Snow her cousin, but she didn’t need to know that he knew Snow’s true parentage.

Sansa looked past Jaime, to Bran. “The things we do for love,” she said softly.

A shiver ran down Jaime’s spine, and behind Sansa he saw Brienne enter the godswood. 

The contrast was striking. Sansa was willowy, long ginger hair spilling elegantly down her back. Her mother’s regal bearing, her father’s righteousness. Brienne was broad-shouldered but graceful despite the bulk of her armor, flaxen hair clipped short and brushed back from her pale face. Her lovely eyes were focused on her lady until she noticed Jaime. She bit her lip, just for a moment, and looked away.

He hadn’t woken her, when he came back this time. Last night, a year and more past for him now, would still be fresh in her mind. They’d argued, and when words failed, Brienne had turned her gentle hands and firelit flesh to the task of keeping Jaime under her protection at Winterfell, far from Daenerys, far from Cersei.  

“Send the raven,” he growled to Sansa, and only nodded to Brienne as he passed her. If this plan worked, he only needed to keep her alive once. Even he should be able to manage that.

 

* * *

 

"You’re holding back,” Brienne complained, her sword sliding away from Clegane’s as they circled the clearing where they’d made camp for the night.

“I wanted to go to fucking sleep,” he countered. “You wanted to spar.”

They were two days south of the crossroads, and so far Brienne was none the wiser about Jaime’s repeated resurrections. He had been careful, falling back to talk to Arya now and then as they rode, but never long enough to seem too familiar. Clegane cursed and grumbled and acted as if there was nothing strange at all about a Lannister and a Stark traveling together. 

The Hound and Brienne were well-matched, powerful, brutal at times. Watching them made Jaime more than a little jealous. He missed the ease of fighting with his right hand. Instincts honed over decades, movements and tactics practiced until they came without thought. He no longer had that luxury, though he’d improved immensely since Bronn knocked him down with his own gold hand. 

Brienne pushed the Hound until he finally started fighting her as if he cared to win. Not that it mattered. Brienne’s superior agility wore down Clegane’s longer reach, and his sword went skittering away in the dirt. Clegane just grunted his yield and went back to his wineskin. Jaime hadn’t noticed how much the man drank back when he was guarding Joffrey. He hadn’t noticed a lot of things. 

They’d been riding hard, a task made easier with four to keep watch. They were better rested approaching the besieged city than they’d ever been, though Jaime would trade these last nights sleeping curled up with Brienne for knowing that she was safe at Winterfell. 

Jaime was just about to suggest to Brienne that they let Arya take first watch when the girl bounded to her feet and drew her slim little sword. 

“We can’t let them have all the fun,” she said with a smug grin. She was very sure of herself, and if past experience was any guide, persistent.

Reluctantly, Jaime got to his feet and approached her. He only hoped that she remembered not to kill him this time. He was armored now, the same dark Stark armor with a black lion Gendry had been working on added to the chestplate, but her Needle was adept at sliding between gaps in a man’s plate. He’d seen it once when runaway Tully soldiers accosted them outside what had appeared to be an abandoned cottage. 

Jaime saw Brienne’s frown as he drew Widow’s Wail. He’d never once managed to genuinely hurt Arya, but of course she didn’t know that. 

And then he could focus on nothing but Arya, because she’d already begun her attack. Her brow furrowed briefly as they began, when Jaime countered her first strike. As they continued, Jaime getting in a few touches here and there while she slapped him mercilessly with the flat of her slim blade, Arya began to grin. She laughed now and then, and even complimented him on a particularly good move. And then she kicked his knee out and shoved him in the dirt, kicking Widow’s Wail out of his hand. Her sword pointed down at his face. “Yield?” she asked, laughing. 

“Yield,” Jaime agreed, breathing hard and laughing a bit himself. She truly loved to fight, the way he had at her age. 

“The mighty Lion of Lannister, dumped in the dirt by a little girl,” Clegane hooted.

Jaime shook his head. No one had called him that since his days as a tourney knight. It felt like another lifetime. “Not much of a lion anymore,” he conceded. 

Arya held out a hand to help him up, but Jaime just scoffed and clambered to his feet. He must weigh twice as much as she did, no matter how strong she was. 

Only when he was on his feet did Jaime realize that Brienne hadn’t reacted at all. “Come, my lady, no jibes about my slow footwork or terrible form?” He turned toward her, and stopped cold.

Brienne’s arms were folded across her chest, and the firelight had turned her eyes the same burning blue as the heart of a forge. Her hand gripped Oathkeeper’s hilt so hard her knuckles were white. 

Clegane took one look at her and hopped off the log he’d been sitting on. “I’ve got to take a piss.” He disappeared into the trees. 

Brienne stood, and Arya retreated as Brienne took her place. “Pick up your sword, ser.” It was a command, not an invitation, and her voice was harder and more cutting than he could recall since she had him on a leash in the Riverlands.

She saw something. She  _ knew  _ something. 

“Isn’t that enough sparring for one evening? We have a long day’s journey tomorrow,” he reminded her, picking up the sword nonetheless.

Brienne drew Oathkeeper, and that was answer enough. Her eyes were locked on him, nothing playful in her demeanor as there had been with Clegane. 

Jaime had barely raised his blade when she spun into a quick strike. He only just deflected the blow, the shock of it reverberating all the way up his arm. She feinted, and struck again, full power, not holding back at all. 

Jaime dearly wished they were not sparring with Valyrian steel. In this mood, Brienne was like to cut his head off by mistake. Or perhaps not by mistake. His blood heated, rushed, watching the way she moved. Fucking and fighting, he always thought, the two things that made Jaime feel alive. Oh how he loved to do both with her. 

Jaime ducked and spun away from her next thrust, and his point scraped along her armored chest. 

Her eyes narrowed. “When did you learn that?” She circled him, waiting for an opening he didn’t intend to offer.

“I taught him,” Arya piped up in an effort to be helpful.

Jaime caught her eye and shook his head slightly.

Brienne didn’t even look at the girl. She lunged, and Jaime dropped to the dirt to avoid her blade, rolling swiftly out of her reach. 

She waited, sword ready, as he scrambled up. “When? I never even saw you two speak to each other, much less spar, before these last few days.”

Arya came between them, and Brienne lowered her sword. “I warned you this would happen. Tell her.”

Brienne sheathed Oathkeeper, glaring at Jaime. “Tell me what?”

He’d never actually told anyone but Arya, who believed him because she’d lived it too. Jaime tried to gather his thoughts, but they stayed tangled. Brienne waited patiently, Arya less so.

Arya stepped forward. “Bran is—”

“No, I’ll tell her,” Jaime cut her off. He took a deep breath and plunged forward. “I’ve seen the battle for King's Landing. The day after tomorrow, Daenerys Targaryen is going to burn the city and the castle.”

“You’re saying you had a vision, like Bran?”  

“The city surrenders,” he continued. “And she burns it anyway.  _ She burns them all. _ ”

Brienne’s angry expression finally softened. “Jaime, you can’t believe that. It was a dream. She’s not her father.”

“I die in the battle.” She needed to know that, to understand the rest.

Brienne frowned. “Stop. That’s not going to happen.” 

“It does. You don’t understand. I’ve died in the Red Keep and in the streets so many times it all blurs together.” He didn’t tell her that Bran had told him even before Winterfell that he wouldn’t live to see the end of the war.

“Stop saying that. It’s not possible.” Brienne was getting angry again.

“Neither is a shadow born of blood magic, a red sorceress setting a thousand Dothraki arakhs on fire, or an army of the dead.” He waited while she absorbed that. “Bran touched me before I left Winterfell the first time. He showed me things about the battle. I didn’t understand it, until I died and woke up in our bed, unharmed, and it all happened again. And again.”

“This is not funny, Jaime. It’s cruel.” 

“Bran did it to me, too,” Arya said. “I died more than a hundred times before I killed the Night’s King.”

Brienne looked at her like she’d never seen the girl before. “You swear this is true?”

Arya nodded. “By the old gods and the new.”

Brienne stumbled away from them, sat heavily on the log Clegane had left. “So you’ve been training with Lady Arya…”

“For a moon’s turn. Perhaps longer,” Jaime answered, glancing at the Stark girl. “Sometimes she gets overzealous with her blades and we never reach the city at all.”

Clegane wandered back into the clearing. He looked at Jaime with surprise. “Thought you’d be dead by now.”

“Not yet.” 

“Do you believe this?” Brienne asked the Hound, confusion and hurt warring with skepticism in her face.

Clegane glanced between Arya and Jaime. “He knew things he couldn’t know.” He pushed up his sleeve. “Told me how I got this bite. Told the girl things she did in the battle against the dead.”

Cautiously, Jaime approached Brienne. She wasn’t looking at him, hadn’t really since they stopped fighting. “We should talk,” he said softly. 

She looked behind him, at their traveling companions.

Jaime turned and glared until they made themselves scarce. Knowing Arya, she wouldn’t go far. Knowing Clegane, he’d sit against a handy tree and drink until he fell asleep. Jaime sat beside Brienne, wishing they were a bit closer to the fire. Even here in the Crownlands the nights were cold. 

“Tell me, from the beginning,” she said quietly, and turned to watch him. 

He should have thought this through better, the gods knew he’d had enough time. But the truth would wound her, and Jaime was sick to death of hurting Brienne. 

“You left to save your sister,” she prompted. 

The quiet resignation in her voice cut through his reluctance. “I thought I could reason with her. I couldn’t. That first time, she threw me in the black cells and only released me when she was alone and the castle was crumbling around her.”

“I tried to save her. I tried to stop her. I killed Qyburn. I killed Greyjoy. Tyrion even tried to send us away in a boat. But she died every time. You were right. I can’t save her.”

Brienne’s brow furrowed. “I was right?” 

Of course, for her that never happened. “We … talked about it. You wouldn’t remember.”

“We argued,” she corrected, but gently. That much hadn’t changed because they were lovers. Brienne was as stubborn as always, and Jaime still proud and prickly as ever.

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

Brienne turned her gaze on the fire. “Are you going to her now?” 

If he didn’t know her so well, he might not have heard the hurt in her voice. It was one thing to know Jaime still loved his sister, it was another to stand by while he betrayed the Starks and everyone he’d fought beside in service of that love. Brienne wouldn’t be able to allow that, and Sansa had counted on it.

“No. We’re going to Jon Snow, as I told Lady Stark.” He paused. “Do you want to know what will happen? You’ll never again try to convince me I’m a good man once you’ve heard it.”

Brienne huffed and turned to face him. She put a hand on his right arm, and Jaime wished he could take her hand but all he had to offer was cold and useless gold. “Do you listen when I speak? Ever?”

Jaime sighed and turned awkwardly to rest his left hand atop hers. “You know I do.”

“Then listen to me now. A hateful man, a man I could not trust or love,” her voice shook and her eyes darted away, as if she couldn’t bear to see his face as she said the word, “would not have cared when Locke’s men tried to rape me. Would not have returned for me or protected me from a bear with his own body. Would not have given me his own Valyrian steel sword, armor, a squire, and sent me to protect his enemy’s child.”

“Brienne, I sent you away because I thought Cersei might hurt you. I had no idea you would find Sansa.” He had to tell her that much. The story that he’d cared enough for the Stark girls to defy his family had chafed when she told it at his trial. His motives had been selfish, as usual. 

Brienne shook her head, as if the notion of Jaime caring for her back then was ridiculous. “You listened to me at Riverrun. You spared the Tully men, you spared the castle.”

“And the Blackfish died.” The only man consigned to the crypts that day. Jaime had insisted on that much when his men tried to throw the body in the Red Fork. “Do you know what he said to me, when I tried to parley? He said he only agreed to talk to get the measure of me, and he was disappointed.”

A little line appeared between her eyes, a sure sign of her displeasure. “Jaime, I asked you to listen and you keep running your mouth.”

“I thought you liked my mouth.” The words tripped off his tongue before he could call them back, so used to teasing her that the words came without thought. 

She ground her teeth in frustration, but her cheeks turned pink. Brienne turned to face him and pulled her hand away from his. For a moment he was concerned, but then she cupped his cheek in her hand. “You  _ are  _ a good man. You, ser, are fearless, brave, and loyal even when it’s hard. You care deeply for others, and you put their needs first.”

He couldn’t dispute that he would do anything to protect the people he loved. He had done terrible things all his life in service of that. And yet his father was dead, his children were dead, and his sister soon would be. 

Jaime leaned into her warm palm, steeled himself, and told her. “The day after tomorrow, I will stand before the gates of King’s Landing with Jon Snow’s sword at my throat. And when Cersei comes to tell him she won’t surrender to save me, Drogon will burn the gates with her and the Mountain standing atop them.”

Brienne froze, her hand stiff as marble under his cheek. “You’ve done this before.” Each word fell from her tongue like a stone. 

Jaime nodded. “Twice.” 

Brienne pulled her hand away, and the winter night chilled his skin. She stood, walked to the fire and crouched before it, adding more wood. “And Daenerys still burned the city?” 

“The bells rang, the soldiers surrendered. She didn’t care.” She’d looked grief-stricken and furious, a potent combination he understood well. If he’d had a dragon at his command when Olenna Tyrell told him how she killed Joffrey, perhaps he would have reduced Highgarden to smoking rubble. But he thought not. And he would never have burned all the grain of the Reach to starve King’s Landing into surrender. That was a tactic worthy of Tywin Lannister.

Brienne stood, her gaze taking in the woods surrounding them. Arya was likely listening to them, just out of sight. “Why would she surrender this time?”

Jaime rubbed his right wrist. The gold hand made his stump ache in the cold. He pushed up his sleeve and started unbuckling it. “If he got Lady Stark’s raven, Snow told her that Cersei has stashed wildfire all over the city.”

“Oh.” Such a tiny sound, and yet Jaime knew she understood. The sick feeling in his gut when he thought of Aerys, when he thought of the stench rising from the smoking ruins of the Sept of Baelor as he returned to the city from the Twins. When he realized that Olenna Tyrell had been right, about Cersei and about him. 

“Tyrion says she’s not her father. Let’s hope he’s right.” He set aside the gold hand, rubbed idly at the cold, chafed skin. 

Brienne sat beside him again, leaned against his shoulder. “I still think you’re a good man,” she said softly.

Jaime turned his head and let his lips brush her cheek. “Keep telling me that. Perhaps someday I’ll believe it.”

  
  
  



	11. Chapter 11

“You think this will work?” Jon Snow gestured to the map before them, the tokens marking locations of men and weaponry.

“If Daenerys plays her part, yes,” Jaime answered.

“Queen Daenerys will not fail,” Grey Worm said loyally, scowling at Jaime as he strode from the tent. Given how many times the Unsullied had killed him, Jaime wasn’t interested in trying to win the man over.

“Ser Davos, you’ll communicate this to our captains?” Snow asked his advisor.

“I will. Lady Brienne, if you would assist me?” The man had been Hand to two kings now, and still seemed surprised to be included in war councils.

Brienne looked to Jaime briefly, a hint of a smile on her lips and warm reassurance in her eyes, before following Seaworth out of the tent.

Arya rolled her eyes at them, and held her hand out for Jaime’s gold hand. He unbuckled the fastenings while Snow wrote the message for Cersei. Arya would leave tonight and get into the city long before the gates were closed.

Jaime finished removing the hand at the same time Jon finished writing. Arya snatched the hand off Jaime’s arm, but Jon held tight to the message when she tried to take it. “Are you sure about this? You could be recognized,” Snow told her.

“I won’t. No one will see me unless I want them to,” she scoffed.

Jaime put his hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at him defiantly. “We need her to come to the gates, little wolf. She’s not yours to kill.”

Arya bared her teeth at him. “I know that. I don’t have to like it.” She stormed out in a fouler temper than usual, leaving Snow alone with Jaime. That had never happened before.

Jon watched Jaime curiously. “She listens to you.”

“Not really,” Jaime demurred. He dropped into a chair and rubbed his wrist, grateful to be free of the gold hand again.

“Do you remember when we met? When King Robert came to Winterfell.”

In truth, the memory of pushing Bran Stark from the window had blotted out much of that visit. He remembered the cold, how the smallfolk sneered openly at him. Looking at the man before him, he tried to recall the boy he must have been, those long years ago. “You were about to join the Night’s Watch.” He did recall that much.

“You told me that I must be honored to join such an illustrious group. You were mocking me.”

Jaime smiled bitterly. “I often was.” And then he remembered. “I told you if you were wrong about it, it was only for life.”

Jon barked a laugh. “You tried to warn me.”

“In my way, yes,” Jaime conceded. “You were very young. So was I, when I took my vows.”

“And how is it you don’t wear the white cloak now?” Jon asked.

Jaime looked away. “Tommen removed me. The High Septon disapproved of me.”

Jon laughed, but it wasn’t mean-spirited. “My men removed me as well.”

That caught Jaime’s attention. Snow didn’t even seem upset about his men mutinying. “The Night’s Watch is for life. I wasn’t aware a lord commander could be removed.”

Jon sighed. “My men decided that their Lord Commander was a traitor in league with the wildlings. I was, in a way. They ambushed and stabbed me to death.”

“Nearly to death, clearly, if you’re sitting here,” Jaime corrected.

Jon stood and rucked up his tunic, exposing at least ten poorly-healed stab wounds, including one that should have punctured his heart. Jaime had aimed for it often enough to know. “No, I was dead a full day, perhaps longer. I never asked.”

Jaime was glad he was already sitting. Daenerys must know about this. She had to have seen the scars. So Jon was not just her lover, not just the rightful Targaryen heir, but had also defeated death to be here. That was one hell of a powerful story, the kind that got a man placed on a throne. “How did you...”

“Stannis’s red woman, Melisandre. The one who lit the trench at Winterfell. She brought me back. Said her god had plans for me. Lord Beric told me once that he was less and less himself each time Thoros of Myr brought him back. I only came back once.” He grimaced. “That was enough.”

“Death. Do you recall it?” Jaime’s own deaths were a complete blank, one moment succumbing to the dark, the next whole and alive in his bed.

“No,” Jon said simply. “There was nothing. My watch ended.”

“And yet you still defend the realm.” The boy went home, to Winterfell, he’d heard that much, where the Northern lords put a crown on his head, and he set it aside as quickly as he could. Yet here he was, still fighting, still putting others ahead of himself.

Jon cast him a look. “As do you, without the white cloak.”

Jaime shrugged. “The Kingsguard doesn’t serve the realm, just the king. Not even the queen, if their goals are in opposition. There was simplicity in that. Protect the king. It seemed so easy when I took my vows. Life is much more … complicated.”

“When you stand with your brother against your sister, I can imagine.”

Jaime ran a hand over his beard. “I don’t imagine it’s easier standing with your queen against your sister.”

Jon shook his head. “Sansa isn’t against Daenerys.”

“Lady Stark prefers your dragon queen over my sister, true.” Jaime paused. “I fought Daenerys once, you know.”

Jon regarded him coolly. “And you lost.”

“I did,” Jaime agreed. “She burned hundreds of my men, burned the entire grain harvest of the Reach in fewer minutes than I have fingers. And then she burned Randyll Tarly, not much of a loss there, he was a cunt, but she burned the son too, and he was a decent, loyal man.” Jaime had only heard about that one, he’d been half-drowned in the Blackwater Rush at the time, but the gruesome tale had spread like wildfire.

“She said it was necessary,” Jon said, prickly as a hedgehog, but listening nonetheless.

Jaime held up a hand, silencing him. “Necessary. I’ve heard that song before, Snow, and you’ll hear it too. Aerys thought burning anyone who was against him was necessary, and before long half the realm was against him, even his son. Barristan Selmy got deep in his cups one night and told me about it. Rhaegar, you see, found it necessary to depose his own father. He was meeting with his allies at the tournament at Harrenhal, or at least he was until Aerys chose to attend to steal Tywin Lannister’s heir in front of every lord in three kingdoms. And then Rhaegar caught sight of Lyanna Stark, and everything went to the seven hells.”

Jon’s dark eyes narrowed. “Why are you telling me this?”

Jaime wasn’t sure, really. Their plan hinged on Daenerys, not Jon, but if they succeeded, this might be Jaime’s only chance to give Rhaegar’s son one last piece of advice. And he strongly suspected that Jon Snow would need it.

Jaime stood. “You’re a good man, like your father. But even a good man can lose his head over a woman. I hope your queen listens to you more than mine listened to me.”

He hesitated at the doorway of the tent, trying to remember where Arya and Brienne had gone  when they arrived in camp.

“To the left. Stark sigil out front,” Jon said.

Jaime looked back curiously.

“Lady Brienne’s tent,” Jon clarified.

“Ah. My thanks.” Either the boy was unusually observant or Lady Stark had mentioned their relationship in her raven. And if Snow knew, then Daenerys might as well, which made Jaime uneasy.

“Don’t thank me, Lannister,” Jon said with all of Ned Stark’s humorless certainty. “Just do your part tomorrow.”

Jaime nodded and went in search of a tent with a Stark sigil.

 

* * *

 

If Jaime ever prayed, he would be praying now. Armor concealed beneath his cloak, Jaime stood once again before the gates of King’s Landing, Jon Snow’s hand clamped around his arm. He could smell the city even from here, feel its grit between his teeth. Too many people, too much fear, trapped inside the city’s high walls.

“There she is. I admit, I doubted she’d come,” Jon said quietly.

“I didn’t,” Jaime answered. He watched Cersei survey the besieging army, watched her smile at how obviously overmatched they would be by the Golden Company arrayed before the gates. She didn’t know more than a third of their men were elsewhere.

“Where is she?” Cersei asked, ignoring the fact that Snow had sent the message, not Daenerys. Jon Snow and the Northerners were nothing to her. The Unsullied were merely an annoyance, and the Dothraki no threat within the twisting streets of the city, not the way they were in the open field.

“Dragonstone. Queen Daenerys awaits word of your surrender,” Jon answered. Jaime could hear Rhaegar in every word the boy said. He couldn’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse that Jaime was the only one left alive who’d known the last Prince of Dragonstone.

Cersei smirked. “And why would I do that?”

“To save your brother,” Snow replied, and unsheathed his sword as Jaime dropped to his knees.

“Jaime was dead the minute he turned his back on me. Take his head. It’s nothing to me.” It never got easier to hear her say that. Not when he’d tried so hard to save her life.

In the distance, a boom signalled the beginning of Daenerys’s attack on the Iron Fleet.

“I’ll surrender,” Cersei said suddenly.

“What?” Jon Snow couldn’t hide his shock.

Jaime didn’t dare say a word. Cersei had never offered to surrender before. Never. And he’d done nothing to influence her this time. The only difference was the raven sent to Jon Snow.

“I’ll surrender if that big ugly whore kills him herself.” Cersei’s smirk turned sharp as she looked behind him, to where Brienne stood with Ser Davos and the Hound. Brienne wore a hooded cloak, at Jaime’s insistence. He hadn’t wanted her here at all, but Brienne refused to stay back with Tyrion. “Did you think I wouldn’t see you? You’re far too large to hide anywhere, and too proud to hide that golden sword. I never asked, how did you earn that? On your knees or on your back?”

Jaime looked back over his shoulder, forcing Snow’s blade away from his throat. “Do it,” he hissed.

Brienne pushed the hood back, exposing her stricken face. “No,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “I won’t.”

“No?” Cersei called. “If you see your precious Sansa again, you can tell her my brother’s cock was worth more than seven kingdoms.”

Jaime turned to glare at his sister, struggling against his shackles. “That’s enough,” he snarled.

More explosions boomed from the sea, but Jaime had lost any sense of when Drogon would reach the gates. Cersei was toying with them, he had no doubt, but they only needed a little more time.

“Lady Brienne,” Snow said firmly. At least the boy was keeping his head.

Jaime heard footsteps behind him, and a sword sliding from its sheath.

Cersei turned and said something to the soldier next to her. Not Qyburn. Why wasn’t he here? Cersei turned back to them, and the smug smile on her face turned his stomach in knots.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an archer draw and fire.

Jaime turned straight to Jon, expecting to find an arrow in the boy’s belly, but Snow was unharmed. And then he saw Davos and Clegane holding Brienne between them. An arrow protruded from her throat.

Chaos erupted at the front of their ranks as more arrows flew and the Golden Company advanced.

Jaime didn’t care. He barely noticed the Dothraki charging past him, he knew nothing but Snow ripping off his shackles, and the sound of Cersei laughing high above them.

Jaime tore Brienne from the other men’s arms, cradling her to his chest as best he could. She was choking, blood spilling from her mouth and running into her hair, splattering across her armor as she coughed. Her eyes were horribly aware, a tear escaping as her hands clutched him.

He was babbling nonsense, her name, that he was sorry, that he loved her, and her hand came up to cup his cheek. He kissed her bloody palm.

A rush of wings, and Jaime bent over her, protecting her however he could, as the gate exploded outward in a searing wave of fire and stone, taking much of the Golden Company with it. At least Cersei had stopped laughing.

Brienne’s hands loosened their grip and fell away. Her eyes were dull and lifeless. Something inside him shattered.

Clegane suddenly appeared at his side. “Lannister, you need to go,” he said urgently, shaking Jaime’s arm.

“No. Kill me now.”

Clegane bared his teeth. “We need to know if the raven worked. Go. I won’t leave her.” He pried Brienne from Jaime’s arms and thrust Widow’s Wail into his hand.

For the first time since the long night, the blade felt right in his hand. He should have married her. He should have kept her safe. He should have fucking killed Cersei himself.

Jaime rushed through the carnage of the ruined gate, stumbling over burning men and debris, choking on dust and smoke. He could taste blood, half his face was slick with it.

The Mountain’s smoking helm lay just inside the old gate. Jaime kicked it aside and hurried on. Smallfolk cowered in doorways, dying soldiers screamed and moaned around him, Jaime ignored them all. His blade flashed only when someone stood in his way.

Snow had already demanded the Lannister soldiers’ surrender when Jaime reached the leading edge of the allied armies and gave the order a second time, confirming that the queen was dead. Swords fell to the cobbles, and men to their knees, under the watchful eyes of Daenerys Targaryen.

Her gaze settled on Jaime, his face and dark armor smeared with blood, his sword still dripping. He’d betrayed his own sister, given her the city, what more could she want? Her eyes narrowed, and he knew. He dropped to his knees on the cobbles, pain screaming through his knees, but he didn’t care. Not if his surrender would end this.

The bells rang, echoing through the streets.

“The city is yours,” Jon Snow called. “The throne is—”

His voice cut off in a strangled cry.

Jaime turned, his heart pounding, and saw Grey Worm pulling his dagger from Jon.

Wings flapped above them, and Daenerys took flight.

Jaime didn’t hesitate. Even as Grey Worm moved toward him, Jaime surged to his feet and struck, his sword slicing through Grey Worm’s arm. Jon slumped to the street, coughing blood onto the cobbles, and chaos exploded around them.

Jaime fought, heedless of how many times he was cut, stabbed, and burnt, killing anyone who raised steel to him. He heard Davos call out for him once, and he heard the call to retreat, but he ignored it. The song of steel and blood filled his ears, and he would take as many of these bastards down to the seven hells with him as he could.

 

* * *

 

Jaime jolted awake, his heart hammering in his chest, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

The battle was still raging in his mind. Dothraki riding through the middle of the melee, flashing arakhs killing anyone on foot. Unsullied spearing men who’d been their allies minutes earlier. Northmen dragging girls into alleys and butchering soldiers still on their knees in surrender.

It had been a bloodbath, worse than any fight he’d seen waged between mortal men, and he’d fought against the reavers of the Iron Islands, who would happily bite your nose off and shove it down your throat. Jaime had lost track of how many men he killed, he wasn’t even sure how he died. One second he was striking a man’s head from his shoulders and the next he was in bed.

Timbered ceiling, warm furs, flickering firelight. Winterfell.

He turned his head, slowly, and found Brienne there, sleeping, peaceful. Alive. Thank the Father, the Warrior, and the Three-Eyed bloody Raven.

Cersei laughed as Brienne lay dying.

Rage filled him. He could go back to King’s Landing alone, sneak into the Red Keep, make his way to Maegor’s Holdfast and up to Cersei’s chambers. He’d been there often enough now to know when the Mountain wouldn’t be a problem.

He could wait for her to come to bed, on the night before the end. Would he greet her with a smile? Would he come out of the dark or wait in plain sight? Either would do as long as she was alone.

He wouldn’t even need his sword. His hand around her slim white throat should be enough. She would fight, claw at him with her nails, struggle and rage like the lioness she was. But Jaime was stronger. Strong enough to do what needed to be done.

And when she was still and silent, half of himself lifeless at his own hand, Jaime would carry her to the throne room. He knew the tunnels and passages well enough to make his way.

What would Daenerys say if she found him on the throne, another dead monarch at his feet?

“ _Dracarys_ ,” he muttered. Dragonfire, in High Valyrian, according to Tyrion.

Nothing would change, but he would know he was capable of killing his sister, that they were truly the same, twins in every sense.

Jaime stared at the fire for a long time, until his eyes were hot and dry, and the rush of battle fled his body, leaving him weak and exhausted.

He pulled off his boots, shrugged out of shirt and breeches, and crawled back into bed.

Fuck his sister. Fuck Daenerys. And fuck King’s Landing.

 


	12. Chapter 12

He stirred in the early morning light when Brienne disentangled herself from him. Jaime reached out and dragged her back, burying his face in the nape of her neck, breathing her in, brushing his lips against her warm skin. She smelled like swordplay: salt, leather, steel. Home.  

She ran her fingertips lightly up and down the arm clasped around her waist, her touch always the same no matter which arm he held her with. “I need to go, but you should sleep. You tossed and turned all night.”

“Stay, just a little longer,” he asked, not above begging if it would make a difference.

Brienne turned over, her face suddenly very close to his. Her eyes were like the sky looking down on him, a true, infinite blue. She made it hard to look away. “Are you staying?” Her voice was steady, but Jaime felt the tremor in her touch.

“Yes.” The lie burned even as he said it. He wanted to mean it. But Jaime didn’t know what happened after Daenerys burned the city. Whatever it was, Bran Stark had decided it was bad enough to send Jaime back, over and over, for more than a year now. Two years, perhaps. He’d stopped counting to keep himself sane. 

But he could give her today.

He kept Brienne in bed awhile longer, distracting her from her duties with his mouth and increasingly skilled left hand. He loved to watch her face, even when she couldn’t keep her eyes open, as his fingers made her arch and squirm and whisper what she needed in her breathless, husky voice. For all her initial awkwardness and inexperience, Brienne had learned swiftly what she liked and how well Jaime took direction. He could bring her to a shuddering climax in what felt like seconds with no more than his hand between her legs and his voice in her ear. And then again, slower, as if they had all the time in the world, with his cock sheathed inside her and her hands roaming over him possessively. 

He dozed after she left, his dreams less bloody but all the more impossible for it. Spring, on that lush green isle he’d glimpsed on his way to Dorne, when the seven kingdoms were not yet so cold. A world apart from the game of thrones, where he and Brienne might shed their armor and see what they could build together. 

Except Bran had already told him there was no  _ after, _ not for him. 

So Jaime rose, and broke his fast alone in the great hall, listening to the hum of conversation around him. There was a new urgency to the builders’ discussions of repairing the outer walls, fortifying the battlements. They were worried, and the suspicious looks pointed in Jaime’s direction convinced him to retreat to the library for the rest of the morning. 

He found the maps he needed quickly enough among the quiet, dimly-lit shelves. The King’s Landing map he could redraw from memory by now if his hand would cooperate. A book about Dragonstone provided a fine map of the island and another of the fortress itself.

This was the only path left to him, the one he hadn’t explored because the odds of success seemed so slim. If Lady Sansa’s raven to Jon Snow, along with Jaime coming to their camp with Lady Sansa’s sister, her sworn sword, and another former Kingsguard, had convinced Daenerys that Jon was plotting against her, what would Jaime’s arrival on Dragonstone make her think? 

Death by dragonfire seemed almost guaranteed. At least it would be something different, though he wasn’t eager to discover what that felt like. His men had screamed and thrashed, those that weren’t almost instantly turned to charcoal in the heart of the flame.   

Bran had showed him killing Aerys for a reason. Could he kill Daenerys? That would stop her from burning King’s Landing, but what else would that change? She would never sit the throne, so he supposed that would leave the job to Jon Snow. The boy had the right lineage to heal the breach between north and south, and he could ride a dragon, if Drogon would permit him on its back. 

Jaime had to try. But not today. 

He hid the maps in his saddlebags and went in search of Brienne. After the midday meal she often trained with Podrick and the greener soldiers of the Stark garrison. Boys much younger than Pod were now expected to keep Winterfell from falling into enemy hands again. 

He passed the entrance to the godswood and decided to duck inside. The light was different now, bright and crisp with the sun high overhead. Even as shadows still lingered in the lower branches, the godswood sparkled. Snow clung to the needles and bare branches, glittering like jewels. And above it all the white branches of the weirwood tree stretched dripping red fingers up to the sky, spreading wide over the smaller, darker trees standing under its protection.

At the heart of it, Bran Stark slumped under the tree. 

Jaime walked forward slowly, snow crunching under his boots. No birds called from the trees, not even the crows that usually roosted in the godswood. He could see other tracks marring the snow’s pristine surface: Bran’s wheeled chair, and smaller, heeled boots. Lady Stark had come by this morning. She was likely the one who’d tucked all the furs around her brother.

Even so, Bran looked pale, dark circles shadowing his eyes. Did Bran feel the weight of days as Jaime did? Had he lingered here in the snow for more than a year, waiting for Jaime to stop failing at this quest the way he had at nearly everything he’d done since he lost his hand? Even the bloody tree’s stern face seemed to judge him wanting. 

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be taking so long if you’d told me what I needed to do,” Jaime muttered, moving beside the boy to lean against a heavy tree limb. He no longer expected to see another vision, but he was slightly disappointed to be correct.

Bran’s eyes remained white, his body unmoving. Jaime tentatively reached out and touched the boy’s hand, just to be certain he still lived. His skin was cool in the winter air, but warm enough. 

“I needed this day,” Jaime told the boy. He wasn’t sure Bran could hear him, perhaps he was thousands of leagues away, flying with Daenerys’s dragon or on the march with Jon Snow’s soldiers. “Just one day, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

He ran his hand along the weirwood’s smooth white bark. It was warm, eerily so. It fed from the hot springs that bubbled up into a pool just behind it. Jaime had seen the Stark children playing in that pool the last time he was here.

“What did you see?” he mused with all the cynicism borne of life as a piece on Tywin Lannister’s cyvasse board. “Or is all this to seat a Stark on the throne?” 

Bran Stark, or whatever force of the Old Gods that possessed him now, the thing he called the Three-Eyed Raven, did not reply.

He would find no answers here.

Jaime left the godswood, listening intently for the sound of clashing steel. He found Brienne with Podrick and a trio of young soldiers Jaime recognized. Orphans, all of them, sworn to the Starks because there was nothing left of their former Houses. Umber, Mormont, and Bolton. Jaime had been surprised by the Bolton soldier, but the boy seemed loyal enough, grateful not to be turned out in the snow as his former liege lord definitely would have. Tywin Lannister would have as well. Lord Tywin believed that a man who would change his allegiances for something as cheap as a place to lay his head was not to be trusted.

The sight of his lady garbed in the steel he’d commissioned for her, wielding the blade he’d given her, spoke to a primal place inside Jaime, a voice that said  _ mine_. The same voice had whispered in his ear when he'd asked the leatherworker back in King's Landing to tool her swordbelt in crimson, adorned with symbols of both their Houses.

She hadn’t seen him yet, too busy dumping Podrick on his arse, not for the first time today from the surly expression on the lad’s face. The soldiers snickered at him, until Brienne snapped at them. “You think you can do better? Here, Gregor, come try me.”

Gregor looked like he was about to shit his breeches, as well he might. Brienne had a solid half foot of height on him, and the boy looked soft as a fatted calf.

Jaime leaned against a pillar at the edge of the yard and watched as Podrick scrambled up and moved out of the way, ineffectually brushing mud and straw off his clothes.

Gregor took his place opposite Brienne, his sword wavering slightly in his hand.

She could have him in three moves, perhaps two, but Brienne was teaching, not showing off. For all her brusque manner, she was a good teacher. She would be a wonderful mother, given the chance.

Brienne slowed all her moves to half speed as she began, allowing the boy plenty of time to parry and block. He didn’t even attempt to strike at her for at least two minutes, and then he signaled his intentions beforehand, eyes locked on the opening Brienne had intentionally left him, his shoulder leading before he turned the blade to strike.

Brienne’s blunt blade slammed into his right side, knocking the sword from his numbed fingers, and Gregor dropped to his knees, mouth gaping.

The boys behind him laughed uproariously.

Brienne turned, and Jaime could see her stern profile. “Can either of you do better?”

Both soldiers shrugged.

“Podrick, what did Gregor do wrong?” she asked.

“Watched your blade, not your feet,” Podrick answered. “And let you lead him into a trap.”

“Exactly. Now, who’s next?”

The soldiers looked at each other as Gregor got up, rubbing fiercely at his bruised arm. They whispered between each other, and then the Bolton boy said with all the courage of an especially brave ewe, “Isn’t it the Kingslayer’s turn?”

Brienne’s jaw clenched, and the back of her neck went red. “Ser Jaime is not here, Wyllis.”

The soldier pointed, and Brienne turned to see Jaime standing there. “Ah. I was training you. Ser Jaime and I spar.” She emphasized his name, a more subtle rebuke than usual for her. She must have a soft spot for these boys. They and a few others tended to follow her around like ducklings when she was willing to train them. Most of the other knights had left with the army.

“Ser Jaime could stand some training,” Jaime countered. He could show her some of his improvement without all the Braavosi flourishes. 

Brienne’s gaze softened as she looked at him, then she turned back to the soldiers. “Ser Jaime has decades of experience in swordplay, which has served him well in learning to fight with his left hand. This is a skill worth learning for any knight, once you’ve achieved a level of competency with your right hand.”

He loved her for that, framing his maiming as a lesson. The real lesson, of course, was not to expect fair play from sellswords, or anyone outside of a tournament, and not even then. That little shit Loras Tyrell had once ridden a mare in heat during a joust, just to distract the other mounts. 

Jaime unstrapped Widow’s Wail and traded Podrick for a blunt practice sword. The balance was all wrong, but what good would he be if he could only fight with Valyrian steel? His boots scuffed at the dirt as he walked, testing how it would hold up if he changed direction quickly, if mud lingered just beneath a thin skin of ice. 

When he was facing her, her expression stuck halfway between exasperated and amused, Jaime bowed and said with a slow smile, “May I have this dance, my lady?” 

Brienne huffed in annoyance. “I’m no lady, I’m a knight, as you well know, ser.”

He let his gaze drop from her eyes, to linger on her mouth. “I know no such thing.” He held back the smirk that would have ruined this; he wouldn’t embarrass her before these soldiers. 

And he lunged. 

Brienne barely got her sword up in time to turn aside his strike, dropping back two steps to put more space between them.

Jaime circled, and Brienne followed, but she didn’t let him lead for long. When they fought on the bridge so long ago, he’d known in seconds that she couldn’t be conquered, only worn down until his speed surpassed hers. Brienne with sword in hand was relentless, a dark wave that rolled away only to crash over him again. Over the years she’d learned more finesse, more cunning rather than brute force. No need to crush an opponent when a single well-placed thrust would kill as quickly and leave her energy and focus for the next man to try his luck. 

She aimed for his weak right side, knowing full well that his instincts were still tuned to strike from that side. So he brought the fight to her, stepping into her when she expected retreat, pressing close until their swords locked together and Brienne had to throw him off to get enough space to swing her sword again. 

Her breath steamed as she panted with exertion, and Jaime suddenly regretted that they’d never fucked outdoors, under the stars, in the godswood perhaps, without any prying eyes to watch them. And if the old gods were watching, Jaime felt no shame in the act, so let them see two warriors mold themselves into one flesh. 

He laughed aloud, thinking of disapproving tree spirits, and Brienne fell back a step in surprise. He pushed aside her blade with his gold hand, and thrust his to her throat. “Yield?”

Brienne’s eyes flashed with something he couldn’t identify until she’d swept his legs from under him and planted a foot firmly on his chest, her blade at his throat. She grinned savagely. “Never ask a man to yield. Kill him, be done with it. Yielding is for tourneys.” She was looking right at him, but she was talking to the boys. Still teaching, even while Jaime lay pinned in the mud. 

“That’s enough training for today,” Jaime told them, turning his head to see their reaction. They were staring at Brienne with something akin to awe. Good. “See the steward if you can’t think of something useful to do.”

Finally Brienne removed her boot from his chest, wiped sweat from her brow and glanced at Podrick. “Take the practice swords back to the armory, Pod.” She leaned down to take the sword Jaime had dropped, and straightened, handing both to her squire.

Only then did she extend a hand to help Jaime up. He took it, allowing her to pull him to his feet more gently than he expected. “You’re improving,” she said grudgingly, and Jaime laughed again.

She scowled. “Why are you laughing at me?”

He shook his head. “Is it so difficult to offer me any praise, Brienne?”

She released his hand. “I did,” she ground out.

Jaime popped up on his tiptoes, just long enough to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth before she could object. “Is there a septon here, or a sept for that matter?”

A little line appeared between Brienne’s brows, and Jaime wanted to kiss it away. “A tiny sept, built for Lady Catelyn. No septon, the Northerners don’t have much use for the Seven. Why?”

“Because I want to marry you, Brienne. If you’ll have me.”

Brienne’s eyes widened, then she spun away from him, striding swiftly through an archway and into a corridor toward the great hall. 

 


	13. Chapter 13

Jaime hurried to catch up, to grab Brienne by the arm. She spun and slammed him into the stone wall. 

“Don’t mock me,” she growled, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Until Jaime began traveling south, he’d only seen Brienne truly cry once, when they heard about the Red Wedding, and even then her tears made him feel helpless and guilty. 

“Brienne,” he protested, ignoring the pain in his head where he’d hit the wall. “I’m not mocking you. I don’t care if there’s no septon, or if you never want to tell another living soul. I want to belong to you.” 

“But you don’t. You never have.”

“You claimed me the day I arrived here, for good or ill,” he insisted. “I’m yours.”

“For how long?” 

Approaching footsteps made Brienne spring away from him, swiping angrily at her wet eyes. 

“Ser, you forgot your sword,” Podrick said, holding out Widow’s Wail. He glanced between them and his face fell. “Has something happened?”

Jaime took the sword, more violently than he ought. The squire’s only sin was poor timing. “Don’t worry, Podrick. Your lady will recover from the great insult of my marriage proposal.” He regretted the words even as they left his mouth, but he could not call them back. The temptation to kill himself, start the day over again, was so strong he could taste blood. Jaime retreated before he could make it all worse. 

He didn’t get far before he heard footsteps behind him again, too light and hurried to be Brienne. A quick glance confirmed his suspicion. “Leave it be, Podrick. This is hardly the first time I’ve disappointed her, and it won’t be the last.”

The squire caught up and matched his pace. “Ser, you don’t understand. I told you about Lord Renly.” Pod looked shamefaced at that, as well he might since he sang like a bird when he was in his cups. “But I never told you about the others.”

Jaime stopped and turned to the squire. “What others?” 

Podrick fidgeted awkwardly. “The ball, when she danced with Lord Renly. The other men there, they pretended to court her… but they were laughing at her. It was a game to them.”

“I’m not laughing at her,” Jaime said shortly. 

“I know, ser. But you did, out there in the yard,” Pod reminded him. 

“As always, I am cursed to be misunderstood,” Jaime grumbled. “I haven’t presented a challenge to Brienne since I had two hands. I was happy. And frankly thinking of other places we might spar, without an audience.”

Podrick flushed and stammered, and Jaime took pity on the boy. “Where was your lady going? To Lady Stark?” 

Podrick nodded. “Lady Sansa’s solar.”

Of course. “Find Brienne something with her sigil on it. Or her colors.”

Podrick’s brow furrowed. “Why, ser?” 

“I intend to marry her. Today.” Before his reprieve ended, and he had to go south again.

Jaime found Lady Stark’s solar easily enough, it had been Ned Stark’s on his first visit to the castle. Robert had spent a good deal of time in there, drinking and catching up on the years since the Rebellion. And Jaime had stood outside the door, quietly seething in his white cloak and plotting when next to bury himself between Cersei’s thighs while Robert complained about his queen. 

Brienne answered his quiet knock, her eyes clear. If he didn’t know she was upset only a few minutes earlier, he would never guess it now. “What do you want?” she asked shortly. 

“Who is it, Ser Brienne?” Sansa asked. 

“Ser Jaime.” None of her usual warmth imbued his name this time. 

“Come in, ser,” Lady Stark called. More quietly, she said to Brienne, “We could use his experience with sieges.” 

Brienne reluctantly stepped aside and Jaime came into the room. Lady Sansa had a map of the castle and its surrounds laid out on her father’s large desk. Notes were scribbled on it, showing where repairs were in progress, and where the castle was still weak. 

She straightened, tall and proud and sharp-eyed as her mother, and gave each of them an appraising look. “So you’ve decided to return to Cersei.”

“No,” he answered, grateful she’d phrased it in such a way that he needn’t lie. “I’ve asked Brienne to marry me.” 

Lady Sansa could not hide her shock. Her blue eyes darted to Brienne again. Her sworn sword stood with her hand gripping her sword hilt, her jaw clenched, her cheeks flushed with fury or embarrassment, perhaps both. “She refused you. I won’t force her, if that’s what you want.”

Jaime shook his head. He should have remembered that the girl had endured two forced marriages, one in this very castle. “Brienne did not answer. She thought my proposal a cruel jape.”

“It is. A better man would have asked before he dishonored her,” Sansa answered bluntly. 

“My lady—” Brienne started, her distress obvious.

“You’re right,” Jaime cut her off. “I’m not the man she deserves. I’m the man she chose.”

Lady Sansa smiled but it didn’t touch her eyes. “You’ve a pretty face and pretty words when it suits you, Ser Jaime. Your brother has a lot of pretty words, too. It doesn’t make them true.”

“I’m asking for your permission. Brienne is in your service, and her father thousands of leagues away.” Jaime knew Brienne would bristle at the very notion of her needing anyone’s permission to do anything, much less her father’s. She’d given up on marriage long ago, buried every girlish fancy she’d once had, and he knew she’d wanted that once, before the world convinced her it was beyond her reach. Brienne knew the old tales, the songs of summer and the lovers of days gone by, as well as she knew the names and stories of great knights. 

Sansa turned her gaze on Brienne, who was gnawing her bottom lip, eyes downcast. Sansa approached Brienne and spoke to her softly enough that Jaime understood only a few scattered words. Enough to know that the Stark girl wasn’t happy but she’d do as Brienne wished. 

Jaime wished he hadn’t given Brienne so many reasons to doubt his intentions. Her eyes flicked up to his, and he saw fear there. Not fear for him this time, but fear of what he could do to her. She was right to fear it, he’d crushed her heart so many times it shamed him. “Brienne, you know my blackest deeds, and somehow you still believe me a good man. Let me prove you right, every day for the rest of my life.” 

He refused to think about how few days remained to him, to them, while Brienne looked at him, uncertainty in her eyes. "Jaime, last night you were talking about leaving, going south. Today you want to marry me. Why wouldn't I question your intentions?"

"Duty and love are often in conflict," Jaime tried to explain. "I still feel I am needed in the south, but if I must go, I would go knowing you are safe, and you are mine."

Brienne's lips twitched into a small, secret smile. “Yes, I will marry you.”

“Today?” Jaime asked hopefully. He couldn’t spare another day from his mission, but Brienne would never know the difference. She would never know they had wed at all, but he would.

“It could be done today, in the godswood, if you wish,” Sansa said reluctantly. She clearly misliked the idea of Jaime going south to the battle.

“Today? Jaime—” Brienne stammered.

“Please, Brienne. We’ve waited years already. Don’t make us wait any longer.” When he thought of the distances they’d crossed, the lives ruined or ended, the trail of blood left in both their wakes, Jaime could scarcely believe they lived long enough to find their way to each other. 

She got a faraway look in her eye, perhaps thinking of all the time they’d spent apart, the years stolen from them by war. “Today,” she finally agreed.

Jaime grinned, unable to look away from her even as they quickly negotiated the details. The hours passed swiftly, until he found himself standing in the godswood, surrounded by sentinel pines and ironwoods that had lived here since the Ages of Heroes. They stood so thick that Jaime could scarcely believe they were still within the walls of Winterfell. 

Lady Sansa had suggested they take their vows on the far side of the heart tree, where a steaming pond reflected the rose and azure of the sunset sky above. His own reflection wavered in its depths, as did that of Sansa Stark in all her steel grey and black finery, direwolves worked into every piece. Her hair was the same fiery color as the weirwood leaves above them.  

Jaime wore the only scrap of red he’d brought with him, a crimson leather jacket, over his usual dark garb. He’d left off the gold hand, but Widow’s Wail was at his hip. He’d make Brienne a widow soon enough, but he wouldn’t let Bran’s prophecies intrude on this moment, not even with the boy resting silent and white-eyed on the far side of the tree. 

They had no other witnesses. Brienne had only wanted people who cared for them present.

“Are you certain of this?” Sansa asked him, still chilly but curious. 

Jaime checked that they were still alone in the fading light. “My lady, I will count myself lucky every day I spend wed to Brienne, as there are not likely to be many of them. You may think me a fool, but I know precisely how poor my chances are of surviving this war.”

Lady Sansa’s expression softened. “You do love her.” She made no effort to conceal her surprise.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Podrick, and Jaime turned to watch his bride approach. “Brienne is remarkably easy to love,” Jaime said quietly, his throat suddenly tight. 

She walked beside Podrick, not holding his arm as brides often did. The squire grinned like a fool regardless, fully aware of the honor Brienne offered when she asked him to escort her. 

She was out of armor, wearing a dove-grey wool split skirt and a fine white shirt, topped with a white fur cape over a grey cloak to keep away the worst of the cold. The pin fastening the cloak showed the sun and crescent moon of House Tarth. Oathkeeper rode her hip, ever ready to defend her lady, even now. Brienne wore neither jewels nor flowers here in the heart of winter, but the shifting light painted her in rose and gold, and Jaime could scarcely breathe for how lovely she was. 

They skirted the edge of the pool, and stopped before Jaime and Sansa. 

“Who comes here, before the old gods and the new?” Sansa asked, her clear voice ringing out through the silent godswood.

Podrick only stammered a little as he answered, “Lady Brienne of House Tarth comes here to be wed. She is the trueborn and noble daughter of the Evenstar and a knight of the seven kingdoms. She comes to beg the grace of the gods. Who comes to claim her?”

A hint of a smile graced Brienne’s face at that, and her eyes met Jaime’s for the first time. “Ser Jaime, of House Lannister, may the gods forgive his hubris in thinking himself worthy. Who gives her?” He’d been told the words to speak, though he’d embellished them some, but hardly believed Brienne had agreed to them.

Podrick grinned. “Podrick of House Payne escorts her, ser. The lady gives herself in marriage.” 

Jaime couldn’t help but smile, it was so very much Brienne. 

Brienne stepped forward, and Jaime met her, standing side by side before Lady Sansa. Podrick moved to the side to act as their witness.

“Lady Brienne,” Sansa said with all the authority of her parents, “do you take this man?”

Brienne looked at Jaime, her eyes so very blue. “I take this man as my husband.” Her voice quavered. 

“Ser Jaime, do you take this woman?” 

Jaime couldn’t tear his gaze away from her if he tried. “I take this woman as my wife.” 

“Normally I would ask Ser Jaime to cloak the bride and bring her under his protection…” Sansa said uncertainly. 

He hadn’t wanted to wear the rough black traveling cloak here, so he’d gone without. He might wear Robb Stark’s armor, but he would not borrow a Stark cloak. Jaime shook his head. “The best protection I could offer was Oathkeeper, and that she already wears.”

Sansa’s brow furrowed. “Oathkeeper?”

“Her sword, my lady,” Jaime explained.

Sansa nodded, and Jaime wondered if she knew his sword was made from the ancestral blade of House Stark as well. She produced a length of white silk from a pocket of her gown, crushing it in one hand as she continued. “We come here in the sight of gods and men to witness the union of man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever.” 

Her hands were shaking as she moved into the words of the wedding rite of the new gods. She’d been wed with both ceremonies, and neither had brought her any joy. Quietly, Jaime offered, “My lady, you don’t have to—”

“No,” Lady Sansa cut him off. “Let me do this.” She looked up for a moment, seeming to take strength from the castle around her, a thousand years of Starks at her back. Then she turned her gaze to them again. “Would you please join hands?” 

Jaime breathed a sigh of relief that he’d thought to stand at Brienne’s right. They linked fingers, Brienne’s palm rough and warm against his. 

Lady Sansa stepped forward and they held out their linked hands to her. She unfurled the long skein of silk, and began to bind their wrists together. “I am no septon, but this is my home, and you are both in my charge. By that right, I hereby seal these two souls, binding you as one, for eternity.” She tucked the end of the silk under, and squeezed their linked hands before stepping back. “Look upon one another, and say the words.”

Jaime turned, and met the most glorious, tremulous smile, Brienne’s eyes shining with tears, as she’d looked at him when he’d knighted her. Jaime cared not for gods, real though some may be, but the words flowed easily as he mirrored Brienne’s shaky voice. “Father. Smith. Warrior. Mother. Maiden. Crone. Stranger. She is mine, and I am hers. From this day until the end of my days.”

Behind him, Podrick started sniffling. 

A tear ran down Brienne’s cheek, but his hand was bound, so Jaime kissed it away before capturing her lips with his. He smiled as her hand came up to cup his cheek, to hold him close a moment longer, one more kiss to seal his devotion to her, and hers to him. 

When they separated, even Lady Sansa seemed moved. 

“Thank you, my lady,” Brienne told her, wiping tears from her face. “Your mother would be so proud of you.”

Lady Sansa shook her head. “She’d be appalled, but she would understand.” 

Jaime privately agreed, but said nothing. He was too busy being tackled into a hug by Podrick, whose eyes were still shiny. The boy moved swiftly from Jaime to Brienne. “My lady, thank you for sharing this with me.”

Brienne allowed herself to be hugged a moment longer, than disentangled herself from her squire. “Of course you would be here,” she reminded him. 

The boy stepped back, scraped his hands over his damp face and grinned again.

Lady Sansa looked down at their joined hands. “Dinner should be served now. If you don’t want everyone to know you’ve wed, you’ll need to take that off.” 

Jaime knew they’d need to remove it or he wouldn’t be able to eat dinner at all, but still, he wondered. “What say you, lady wife?” He loved the sound of that. 

Brienne bit her lip, and contemplated it a moment. “Leave it for now, if that suits you, my lord husband?” The words were slow, stumbling off her tongue, but she smiled saying them. 

Jaime squeezed her hand, and the three of them set off. Lady Sansa stayed behind to check on Bran once again. He could tell that her brother’s lengthy trance worried her, but Jaime knew there was nothing to be done. Not tonight. 

Lady Sansa was correct. The whispers started the moment they entered the great hall, and did not abate when Jaime and Brienne were seated at the high table beside Lady Sansa, at her request. She made a lovely and dignified toast, confirming what everyone already knew and giving the union her blessing. Jaime was surprised how quickly the glares aimed his way turned friendly. Perhaps they were only pleased Lady Stark was providing more wine tonight, but it was still a relief. 

And Brienne smiled and laughed, all without drinking to excess. She touched his arm to get his attention, let him kiss her briefly in front of everyone, made no fuss when he whispered in her ear. She still blushed and looked scandalized by the things he said, of course, but he liked that about her. 

They slipped away from the great hall one at a time, to avoid anyone suggesting a bedding. 

Jaime didn’t bother to knock before entering. Their chamber was just as warm as their first night together, and his lady wife was adding yet more wood to the fire. He closed the door behind him and bolted it, then unbuckled his swordbelt and hung Widow's Wail beside Oathkeeper. “I can keep you warm, wife,” he offered. 

Brienne straightened and looked at him. “Can you, husband?” She smiled as she said it, that soft, lovely smile he always wanted to kiss. 

And now he could. Jaime went to her, drawing her into a slow, deep kiss. Brienne tasted of sweet red wine and the lemon cakes served with dinner. Unlike their first kiss, there was no awkwardness, no confusion over intentions, just the heady desire he’d never allowed himself to acknowledge until the night of the feast. 

Jaime’s hand slid up to the base of her throat, as it had that night. This time they worked in tandem, Brienne unbuckling his jacket and pushing it off his shoulders as he painstakingly worked the laces of her shirt free. He let her unlace his shirt as well, and they took turns helping each other out of boots and unlacing breeches and skirt. 

They kissed again, wet and searching, and broke apart as Brienne worked his shirt up over his head. “I still hate the North, you know,” he said. 

“No, you don’t,” she countered, dropping his shirt to the floor. 

“I do. It’s bloody cold and Northerners are a humorless lot. But I would stay here forever if you wished it.” He used hand and stump to maneuver the fine linen over her head, exposing her pale skin to the light. Her skin was gilded in the firelight, her hard-earned muscles and slight curves familiar to him but ever enticing. He wanted to taste her, savor her like she deserved. 

Brienne worked the ties of his smallclothes and pushed them to the floor. She kissed him gently, her hand skimming over the side of his face, ruffling his hair with her fingertips. “I love you,” she said quietly. 

Only then did he realize that he hadn’t said those words to her. Not this day, nor in the nights they’d spent in this room. He’d called her “love,” he’d made no secret of his affections, he’d worshipped her body like the treasure it was, but those words had not passed his lips. He’d cried them to her as she lay dying, but never to _this_ Brienne, his wife.

“I do, you know. I’ve loved you far longer than I could put it into words.” 

Brienne let out a heavy, shaky breath, and her chin was wobbling and her eyes were wet. 

He touched her face, every feature beloved to him. “Talk to me, wife.”

She shook her head. “Kiss me again.”

That much Jaime could do. He pushed her gently down to the furs, taking a moment to appreciate every naked inch of Brienne before settling into her embrace. Then he kissed her generous mouth, and the lovely line of her jaw, the tender spot behind her ear, and down the column of her throat. He set lips and tongue and teeth against her collarbones, rubbed his beard over her breasts until she whimpered with need. Her long legs wrapped around him, holding him close. 

Brienne’s hands ran through his hair and down across his shoulders. Her touch never failed to set him on fire. “Jaime,” she gasped as his teeth nipped her skin. 

“Should I make you scream my name, wife?” he asked with a wicked smile. “It is our wedding night.” 

“You can try, husband,” she challenged, breathless. Despite Winterfell’s thick walls and solid wooden doors, Brienne rarely said his name above a whisper when they were in bed. As if the man making her cry out had been a mystery to anyone. 

Jaime shifted until his cock was pressed firmly in the cradle of her spread thighs. He liked to tease her about her fair skin and how easily she blushed, but Brienne flushed with arousal was beautiful to behold. Her cheeks warmed and pinked, her throat and chest followed, the swells of her breasts hot under his tongue, peaked with nipples dark as berries. 

He kissed between her breasts, licked the salty sheen of sweat there, and then kissed the flushed slope of her breast. “I am yours,” he murmured, rocking gently against her. “And you are mine.” He trailed his lips up her chest, lifted his head and looked into her eyes. 

Brienne’s eyes were wide, dark as the sea at night. He could dive into them and be lost forever in her depths, and never care to surface. “From this day until the end of my days,” she answered.

Jaime slid deep into her body in one torturously slow thrust, wringing a moan from her kiss-swollen lips. He captured her hand with his, holding tight as they moved together, Brienne meeting his thrusts with her own. Her other hand slid around the back of his neck, drew him down to kiss her again. 

Then she flipped them, easily, and rose up above him, the fire turning Brienne’s tousled white-blonde hair into a brilliant halo. Even here she moved with a warrior’s easy rhythm and her own kind of grace, strong thighs flexing to grind against him, rolling her hips at exactly the pace and depth she wanted. When Jaime thrust up into her, too eager to lay still, she pressed a hand to his thigh and held him down. 

Brienne didn’t quite scream, in the end, but he roared loudly enough for them both.

Jaime fell asleep in her arms, and woke in the middle of the night, rested as he hadn’t been in a long time. 

He eased out of bed, dressed, and found the white silk from their handfasting in his pocket. Jaime wrapped it around his maimed arm. 

In the quiet of the hour of the wolf, he slipped out of their room and made his way to the godswood. The snow glittered in the moonlight, the leaves of the heart tree rustling as he lowered himself to the snow to sit beside Bran Stark. 

“Thank you, for this day, and for not letting me fuck up my life,” he told the boy. By now he’d grown accustomed to their one-sided conversations. 

Jaime pulled the dagger from his boot. It wasn’t fair to Bran to take another day for himself, not with the strain already beginning to show on the boy’s face. Jaime prayed that that boy had the strength to send him back again. The notion of Brienne finding him here on the morning after their wedding was too terrible to bear. 

He thought of the way the light had kissed her face, and the shy, delighted way she’d said _husband_ as often as possible. 

The trees stood witness as his blood poured into the snow.

 


	14. Chapter 14

_ Daenerys dead in Jon’s arms in front of the Iron Throne. Podrick in a white cloak pushing Bran’s wheeled chair. A Dornish army at the gates of King’s Landing. Oldtown, smoke rising from the great dome of the Citadel and Ironborn ships in the harbor. _

Jaime jerked awake, shaking. Dream, or vision? It felt like a vision, but he’d never had one between death and waking before. He’d never died touching the weirwood, either. 

He slipped out of bed, and froze. Their wedding clothes were strewn on the floor. 

Jaime had died, but the day hadn’t reset. 

 

* * *

  
He barely remembered scribbling Brienne a wholly inadequate note and riding out as fast as he could. 

He’d lost a day. 

He’d definitely died, hadn’t he? He remembered the dagger, the shock of it biting into his flesh, hot blood welling from the wound. 

He pressed his fingers to his chest again. No wound, no blood. He’d gone back mere minutes this time instead of a full day.

Jaime urged the horse faster. He needed to reach the crossroads before Arya and the Hound continued south. He needed to know if anything like this had happened to her.

He’d lost a day, and left his wife.

Brienne would hate him, and he couldn’t blame her. Jaime had taken the white silk again, wrapping it around his wrist before he left. All that he could risk taking of her, if this was his last chance to save the city, to stop what was to come.

The visions haunted him as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the wind swept snow across the kingsroad. Daenerys dead in Jon’s arms. Perhaps the boy had found his spine in the end. If only he’d done it before she murdered hundreds of thousands of people who’d never wronged her. 

And Bran the king. He’d worn no crown, but Podrick’s Kingsguard armor was adorned with a raven. A crippled boy on the throne, protected by a boy who had yet to be knighted. Dornishmen at the gates and reavers in Oldtown. 

The last Jaime had heard of Dorne, before he rode north, the remaining nobles had been close to naming Ser Gerold Dayne, the Darkstar, as their prince. Cersei had dismissed them as a threat, certain they would keep busy fighting each other until long after Daenerys was vanquished. Then she could turn the Iron Fleet on Sunspear. If the Dornish had set aside their differences and crowned the Darkstar, they could pose a significant threat. Arthur Dayne’s cousin was vain, arrogant, and made Jaime look cautious by comparison. Yara Greyjoy might well blame the Starks for her brother’s death. She would be easy to tempt into rebellion. 

Gods how he hated politics. The public smiles and private plots, the exchanges of coin or hostages, ravens and messengers and knives in the dark. Jaime preferred a fight, clean and honest. He never had to guess what a man wanted when swords were raised. 

He’d lost a day, and left his wife, and time was slipping away.

His first night on the road, Jaime barely slept. The horse needed rest, so he lay huddled by his meager fire and closed his eyes, but his thoughts went back to Winterfell.  _ I love you, wife. Forgive me for what I must do.  _ Was she angry? Broken? Chasing him up the kingsroad even now? He didn’t need the complication of the latter even though he longed for it. She could thrash him until he bled, until he broke, and he would deserve every blow. He’d wedded, bedded, and abandoned her all in the space of a single night. 

Long before dawn, Jaime carefully doused the fire and rode south again. 

 

* * *

  
The Hound met Jaime’s furious pounding on his door with the point of a dagger under Jaime’s chin. “What the fuck do you want?” he growled.

“Let me in,” Jaime answered, his eyes gritty and his body aching. He’d slept in the saddle for days, stopping to rest only when his horse began to falter. 

“Why should I?” Clegane asked, slowly lowering the blade. 

“The longer I stand here, the more attention we draw.” The walls of any travelers’ inn had ears, and anything they said out here could fly to the four corners of Westeros swiftly if it found the right ears.

Clegane relented and opened the door enough for Jaime to slip through. 

Arya Stark sat on the bed, quiet and alert, her left hand fondling the hilt of her dagger. 

Jaime tried not to disturb the Hound’s pallet on the floor as he collapsed into the room’s lone chair. “Wasn’t sure I’d make it here in time,” he said, scratching his chin beneath his beard. He didn’t think the Hound had drawn blood with his blade, though it’d been a near thing.

“In time for what?” Arya asked warily.

“To catch you. What happened to you in the Battle of Winterfell is happening to me in King’s Landing. Except it’s getting worse,” he said bluntly. He’d learned swiftly that Arya didn’t need a lot of explanation. She understood the basics, and he only filled in what she needed to know each time. 

Clegane grabbed a wineskin and sat beside Arya. “Well, this should be fucking horrible,” he said sourly, and started drinking.

“Do you need proof of my tale?” Jaime asked wearily, his gaze locked on Arya.

“No, but give it anyway,” she said slowly.

Jaime sighed and thought back. “Clegane has a nasty bite on his arm from your direwolf because he still hasn’t learned you don’t need protection. And in the Battle of Winterfell I died charging the wight dragon.”

“You remember? No,” she shook her head. “I told you. We’ve done this before.”

Jaime nodded. “Not this conversation. But yes. Many times.”

Arya’s eyes narrowed as she assessed the situation. She wouldn’t have been a good soldier, she was too impulsive, too independent, but Jaime would fight beside her and count himself lucky. “You said it’s getting worse.”

Jaime grimaced. “I lost a day. And I had more visions.”

“How the fuck do you  _ lose  _ a day?” Clegane asked incredulously. 

“How the fuck would I know? I died, and I woke up minutes earlier, instead of the day before.” Jaime heard the edge of panic in his voice and tried to calm himself, but it was impossible. He could barely think straight anymore, much less get control of maelstrom brewing inside him.

“What were you doing when you died?” Arya asked. She showed no distrust, no skepticism. At least that much he could count on.

“Sitting next to Bran in the godswood. Did this happen to you?” 

“No.” Her brow furrowed. “A minute or two, perhaps. It all blurs together now, like a dream.” She thought quietly for a moment. “If you’ve been coming here, why did you die at Winterfell?”

Clegane would laugh. Jaime knew he would. His fingers found the loose end of the silk at his wrist, tucked it away. 

“You’re hurt,” Arya said, coming to him and roughly pushing up his sleeve before he could stop her. She frowned to find no wound there. 

“No, I’m not.” Jaime pulled his arm out of her grasp. “I stayed at Winterfell. One day. The last battle was …” He struggled to find words. Nothing was big enough, dark enough.

“Couldn’t be worse than Winterfell,” the Hound grumbled.

“Daenerys burns the whole city.  _ After  _ it surrenders. After Cersei is dead.” He’d had no time to think fighting the dead, just keep slashing, moving, keep eyes on Brienne, don’t let her fall. King’s Landing was different. Strategy and stealth and endless failure, endless grief. 

The Hound handed over his wineskin wordlessly. Jaime took it and gulped the sour wine gratefully. His head started to swim, his empty stomach grumbling in protest. He passed the wine back.

Arya reached past him and took a bread roll from the table, pressed it in his hand and went back to her perch on the bed. “What changed? Had you died at Winterfell before?”

Jaime shook his head. “No. I meant to take the day, die, and come south again.” He tore off a chunk of bread with his teeth and barely chewed it before swallowing. 

Arya sighed. “I could kill you here. Maybe you’ll get the day back.”

“No. I need to kill Daenerys, in case Bran can’t bring me back again. He’s getting weaker.” Jaime finished the bread. At least the gnawing hunger was receding. He hadn’t packed any food when he left, and the road between Winterfell and the Riverlands was nearly deserted.

“What’s your plan then?” Arya asked irritably. Her first plan was always to kill him. Jaime tried not to take it personally. 

“We go to Dragonstone. The night before the battle, she’ll have few guards. She sends Jon Snow and Tyrion away after … she burns Varys.” He didn’t want to kill another monarch, another Targaryen, but she would never listen to him. He’d known that during his farce of a trial. 

Hearing that she’d killed Varys should have told Jaime that his warning about the wildfire would fall on deaf ears. Daenerys thought she was surrounded by betrayers, and she was. Ser Jorah had once spied on her for Robert. Tyrion had turned his cloak and killed his own father. Jon had turned his back on both the Night’s Watch and his own crown. 

“Dragonstone,” Clegane said flatly. He’d visited the fortress once, just as Jaime had, years ago when Robert attended a wedding there. “The three of us sneak onto a bloody island fortress.”

Jaime considered the man. He was a good fighter, but incapable of stealth. 

“Two of us,” Arya corrected, catching Jaime’s eye. “You deal with your brother, Sandor. Lannister and I will go to the dragon queen.”

“What about the Lannister bitch?” Clegane asked gruffly. 

Arya’s gaze stayed on Jaime. 

“Cersei dies. Always. She only makes it out of the Red Keep when you, little wolf, lure her into our trap. And then she burns.” It didn’t hurt as much this time, to think of it. 

Arya smiled, a cruel, biting thing far too reminiscent of the woman she wanted dead. “We leave at dawn.” 

Jaime wished he could feel relieved. But he’d lost a day, he’d left his wife, and for the first time in moons, he had no idea came next.

 

* * *

  
They watched from the shelter of a cluster of boulders on the beach as Daenerys and her guards left the fortress and walked down the beach. Torches ahead marked a cave, where Varys had been escorted a few minutes earlier. The spider had served three kings, but a queen would be his end. 

“What did he do?” Arya asked quietly.

“He tried to tell others about Jon’s claim to the throne.”

Arya’s eyes went wide in the darkness. “You know?”

Jaime nodded. “Last time Daenerys had Jon killed during the battle.” 

Fury flushed her face, and her hand went to her slim little sword. Needle, she called it. Jaime stilled her hand. “Not now,” he reminded her. 

They waited until Daenerys’s guards were far down the beach, then made their way up the steep stone staircase to the castle, and through a servants’ door into the deserted kitchen. Jaime had only been to Dragonstone once, when Robert attended a wedding. Without the maps he’d found, he would be utterly lost here. Even so, he had to guess where Daenerys might spend her evening, once she’d given Varys to her dragon. 

Jaime started to move toward a corridor that led in the direction of the lord’s chambers, when Arya took hold of his right arm. 

“Stay here,” she said, voice barely a whisper. 

Jaime shook his head. “Bran sent me to do this.” 

She squeezed his arm. “I can get to her. You can’t.” 

Jaime tried to protest, but she’d nearly made it to Cersei, he’d seen it himself. She’d delivered their message to the Red Keep. She’d killed the Freys, and the Night’s King. If anyone could kill a Targaryen queen in her own fortress, it was Arya Stark. 

“I’ll wait here,” he conceded, pointing to a heavy oak door across from the hearth.

Arya melted into the darkness, her footsteps silent, only the shine of her eyes betraying her until she turned her back on him. 

Jaime waited. 

The castle was quiet, but Jaime took no chances. He hid in the larder, nibbling a chunk of cheese like the largest mouse in Westeros. Daenerys had few servants, and most were abed at this late hour. He heard the dragon roar, and wished a swift end had found Varys. The man had done a great many things over the years that might be considered evil, but Jaime would ever be in his debt for spiriting Tyrion out of the Red Keep and to Essos.  

Oddly precise booted steps echoed down the corridors some time later. The Unsullied seemed to march everywhere, but it confirmed that the queen had returned. She would speak to Jon Snow privately before he left. Snow had told Jaime himself, the last time around. Pity he hadn’t mentioned where, exactly, they’d spoken. Arya had not troubled herself over this. When pressed during their frantic journey to Dragonstone, she’d said only that she planned to pass as a servant. No one would mistake her for a servant armed as she was.

Jaime waited. His fingers drummed restlessly on the butcher block where he stood, a wicked carving knife at the ready. His sword was not suited for such close quarters. The knife cut another wedge of cheese, and a half-squashed slice of bread. He dared not pace as he wished. It would not do for the Unsullied to hear his footsteps in what ought to be an empty room. 

Perhaps Snow had gone to his aunt’s bed one more time and not wanted to admit his weakness. Jaime was perhaps the only one who would understand that particular flaw. Jaime still cringed thinking of the day he’d taken Cersei in the White Sword Tower. For all the faults of his brothers through the years, none of them had profaned the cloak in such a way. 

The door opened without any warning, and Jaime away from the doorway, blade in hand. The maid’s dark hair spilled well down her back, and her skirts whispered against the floor. All would be lost if she raised the alarm. He plunged the blade toward her breast without allowing himself to hesitate. 

Her hand caught his arm and twisted, the knife falling from his suddenly numb fingers. She caught the hilt before it could clatter to the floor. “That would be a mistake,” she said softly, and turned her face to his.

Wide eyes, dark. A lovely girl with a generous mouth, a tempting suggestion of ample breasts beneath her bodice. Not Arya, and yet, her tone and movements were the same. Some kind of glamour, like nothing he’d ever seen. Magic borne of blood, fire, ice, even trees… perhaps Jon Snow would turn into his white wolf in the Red Keep and tear out Cersei’s lovely white throat.  

“Come. Now, Lannister,” she ordered, and set the knife on the butcher block. “It’s done.”

Jaime followed, his hand tingling as sensation returned.

Running footsteps echoed through the corridors, voices raising the alarm before they’d even slipped out into the night, but their steps were swift, their feet sure of the path even in the moonless night. The sky, at least, was in their favor. Their tiny boat was still hidden amongst the rocks, and it slid into the water without a sound. The girl took her place at the oars alongside him, and neither said a word as they rowed back across the narrow channel of the Blackwater between Dragonstone and the beach east of Rook’s Rest where they’d left their horses. 

The island was far behind them when the dragon roared again, and again. 

“How did you do it?” Jaime finally asked, his left arm already feeling the strain of rowing. 

“Her dagger. They might think it her own work,” the girl answered, her voice throaty and familiar. It was hard to think of her as Arya when she looked like someone else.

Jaime snorted. “They will not.” The dragon queen had not survived a childhood begging across Essos, marriage to a Dothraki, and crushing the cities of Slaver’s Bay beneath her delicate feet only to end her own life on the cusp of victory. 

The girl remained silent, dragging her oar through the water without complaint. She could use both arms, while Jaime’s useless false hand slipped away from the wood every time he tried to add his right arm’s strength to his strokes.

“Is this how I did not see you at the Freys’ table?” he asked.

She glanced at him, a faint smile at her lips. “This face? Yes. I took it off before I killed old Walder. And then I took his face, too.”

“You took it off,” Jaime said skeptically. 

“A gift of the Many-Faced God,” she answered cryptically.

“I don’t believe I know that one.” Another god meddling in the game of thrones. The thought filled Jaime with dread. 

“Death,” she clarified. 

“Ah, yes. And where did you worship the Many-Faced God?” Jaime had wondered where the girl went when she escaped King’s Landing. The smith had told him a few stories, but none explained where she’d learned to fight and to kill with such cold efficiency.

She glanced behind them, checking again for pursuit. The coast was close by, but their horses were still further west. If they came ashore here, they would never make it to King’s Landing by morning. “The House of Black and White.” 

Any Kingsguard worth his salt knew the names of the assassins of the Free Cities. “The Faceless Men.” 

“I was an acolyte,” she confirmed, shifting her grip and rowing faster. “I left.” 

Jaime tried to match her pace, and wondered again how Tyrion had ever expected him to escape the Red Keep in a tiny boat with Cersei. “Is this how you planned to reach Cersei?”

She nodded. “I'd take her Hand's face. She would follow him, while Sandor killed his brother. Then I would show her that the North remembers.” 

Qyburn's absence at the city walls suddenly made sense. Arya would've made an excuse not to go with Cersei, to stay away from the trap.  


The dragon roared, but the sound was closer. They both turned to look over their shoulders, and another sound came across the water. Immense wings, moving fast. 

The dragon flew low overheard, gliding, moving toward the lights of King’s Landing at the western shore of Blackwater Bay. It flew right over them, an immense black shape blotting out the stars, the wind from its wings rocking their little boat. 

They watched the dragon get smaller and smaller, closer to the city. 

And then Euron’s ships began to burn.

 


	15. Chapter 15

Smoke hung thick over the Northern army camp when they arrived just before dawn. Euron’s ships had burned all night, foundered and sank one by one. At least one remained afloat. It had sailed east under cover of darkness after the dragon’s attack, and Jaime had wondered if Euron Greyjoy was on it. 

He had no more time to ponder Euron’s fate, because the camp was in chaos. Men rushed past without taking any notice of them, which was just as well all things considered. There were bodies on the ground outside the pavilion bearing Jon Snow’s direwolf standard. 

Arya, wearing her own face again to Jaime’s relief, drew her sword as they approached. She hesitated on the threshold until they heard Ser Davos barking orders inside. Ducking inside, they found Davos, Tyrion, and the Northern commanders standing around a table. 

Davos pointed at a map of the city. “These gates are still open, we could attack now.” 

“What’s happened?” Jaime asked. Something had gone badly wrong here, but he wasn’t sure yet if the queen’s death was known. 

All eyes turned to them. “Jaime, what are you doing here?” Tyrion asked, shocked as usual when Jaime didn’t send a raven ahead of his arrival.

For a moment he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say. 

“Wildfire. Cersei has wildfire all over the city,” Arya supplied. She sounded none too happy with him either. 

“She might surrender to me,” Jaime lied. “If not, the Lannister soldiers will obey me.” 

Ser Davos nodded. “We may need you.” He looked up, face grim. “The queen was murdered last night.”

“Cersei?” Jaime asked, playing dumb. Arya trod on his foot. Perhaps too dumb.

“Daenerys,” Davos corrected with a grimace. “Jon was the last person to see her alive, so Grey Worm has taken him prisoner. He’s being held in the Unsullied camp.”

Jaime shot Arya a look. She shouldn’t have struck so soon after Jon left Daenerys. Of course he fell under suspicion. “If we sit here too long, Cersei will send out the Golden Company to attack. She doesn’t need the ships you burned to do that.”

“We didn’t burn the ships. Drogon did that alone last night. We can’t control the dragon without Daenerys. Jon has never ridden him, and now we don’t even have Jon,” Tyrion said with a grimace.

“So you have a rogue dragon and no way to eliminate the scorpions.” Jaime almost slipped and mentioned burning the gates but caught himself just in time. “How did you plan to get into the city? They’ll close the gates as soon as they see you coming.”

“Daenerys was supposed to burn them,” one of the Northern lords said. Glover? Cerwyn? Jaime hadn’t been around them long enough to care which was which. They all looked at him with disgust when they looked at him at all. 

“We can’t count on the Dothraki or the Unsullied to fight with us now. Even with the Ironborn out of the fight, Cersei has the advantage,” Davos said.

“Why are we talking about King’s Landing?” Arya asked sharply. “I want my brother back. You’re his bannermen, his Hand. We should be getting Jon.”

“The throne is useless without a monarch to put on it,” Jaime agreed. “If we can retrieve Snow, where is the dragon?” 

“At Dragonstone. We think,” Tyrion said. Jaime had never seen his brother so uncertain of himself. It was unnerving.

Without the dragon, Cersei might actually win this battle, and with it the war. She would march on Winterfell as soon as she could, within a moon’s turn certainly. Surely that wasn’t Bran Stark’s plan. 

A soldier rushed into the tent and almost took Arya’s dagger in the gut for his troubles. “My lord, the Dothraki and Unsullied are marching to the gates.”

“Was Jon with them?” Davos asked.

“I didn’t see him, my lord,” the soldier answered. “Do you have orders?”

Davos looked uneasy and cast a glance at Tyrion. Neither seemed inclined to make a decision. “Tell the men to ready themselves,” Jaime told the soldier. He nodded and left.

“Don’t presume to give orders here, Lannister. You were left behind for reasons even you must understand.” If he thought such a weak insult would cow a Lannister, the Northerner sweating in his heavy furs was wrong. 

“Yes, Kingslayer, commander of the men currently shitting themselves in fear behind the city gates. _ I know,”  _ Jaime snarled. He would drag Aerys behind him until he died, rotten bones clinging to a tattered white cloak, and then likely through all seven hells. “Those men aren’t your problem right now. Your problem is your king is being held captive by a soldier with nothing left to lose and thousands of men at his command. And right now, you are squandering your best opportunity to get Snow back.”

“Why are we readying the men? We don’t need a huge show of force to break Jon out of a deserted camp.” Tyrion seemed to really see Jaime for the first time. At Winterfell Jaime had remained mostly quiet at Brienne’s side. Tyrion had never truly seen him act as a battle commander. 

“Because Grey Worm wants revenge. If they can’t break through the gates, the Essosi might turn around and decide to attack the Northmen.” Jaime could see it happening far too easily, and couldn’t afford to allow it. 

“I won’t fight with you, Kingslayer. Not here, without that big blonde bitch holding your leash,” the Northman spat, getting up from his seat at the table.

“Fine. Protect the camp or leave. It’s nought to me, but if you ever speak of Lady Brienne that way again, you  _ will  _ find my sword in your back,” Jaime snarled, seeing red. It wouldn’t be as satisfying as watching the man try to hold his guts in his body, but the craven deserved nothing better, speaking ill of a lady when she wasn’t here. 

The Northmen all stalked out together, a furred, glowering mass Jaime barely noticed.  

Jaime turned to Arya. “Little wolf, the music is playing again. Care to dance?” 

“I’ll speak to the sentries. I will need a few things,” Arya answered cryptically, and ducked out of the tent. 

Jaime did not want to see her wearing a new face. Watching her remove the last one had been gruesome enough. 

“What do you intend to do?” Davos asked. His face was grey with worry and exhaustion. 

“Rescue your bloody Targaryen king. After that…” Jaime trailed off. He was in uncharted territory now, and badly in need of guidance. “The dragon, the throne, the Dothraki, the Unsullied, take your pick. Snow will need to be strong. Stronger than he knows. Is he ready?” 

“Without her?” Davos considered that. “Aye, he knows his duty. He’ll resist, but he’ll come around.”  

Jaime tapped the table. “This is his purpose, Ser Davos. What he was born for, what he was brought back for.” Even if the boy didn’t want the throne, he must put an end to this war. His time bowing meekly to his queen’s demands was done. Jaime well knew what that felt like.

Davos blanched, but nodded. 

Jaime turned to leave. He’d said too much again, damn him. He’d arrived with Arya. He’d blame his knowledge on her if needed. Arya didn’t even know, this time, just how much Jaime knew. Their long ride from the Riverlands to Dragonstone had been comfortably quiet when they weren’t sparring. She liked to taunt him with a blade in her hand. She reminded him very much of himself in that way. 

“Jaime, wait.” Tyrion clambered out of his chair and hurried to meet his brother as they left the tent. 

A pair of soldiers were collecting the bodies, most likely Jon Snow’s personal guard, butchered by the Unsullied in his defense. 

Jaime didn’t know where Arya had done, so he stood just outside, taking in the scene as the rising sun illuminated the smoky sky, the soldiers around them hurrying to don their armor and take up their weapons. 

Tyrion looked him over closely, his serviceable black clothes and dark armor. “You look like shit,” he said flatly. “But the black lion is a nice touch. Cersei would hate it.”

Jaime chuckled. “She really would.”

“Why did you come? I thought you were happy at Winterfell,” Tyrion asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

“I was, while it lasted.” Jaime shook his head. “You knew I couldn’t hide up there. I did this, killing Daenerys’s father, aiding Cersei all these years.”

Tyrion sighed. “I knew, but I hoped I was wrong.” 

Jaime glanced around, found no one listening to them. “When this is done, I need you to look after Brienne.”

Tyrion’s eyebrows rose. “Your lady knight doesn’t strike me as a woman who needs looking after.”

“No, but … if there’s a child.” Jaime hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge the possibility, not in their nights together, and not in the endless days since. 

Tyrion sighed. “I’ll do what I can to see it legitimized, and she’ll never lack for gold. But I’m sure she’d rather have you.”

“It wouldn’t be a bastard. Just tell her to name him Tarth, not Lannister.” Brienne was younger than Jaime, but not so young she could wait much longer to provide an heir for her island. 

“You wed her?” Tyrion’s astonishment was justified. Jaime had lived in Cersei’s shadow for decades, and never so much as looked at another woman.  

“Before I left.” Jaime’s hand instinctively went to the silk still wrapped about his right wrist. It was considerably less white now than when he’d left her. “Lady Stark performed the ceremony herself.”

Tyrion looked abashed. “I’m sorry, brother. I thought…”

“I know, Tyrion. Don’t apologize. In another life, I would have run back to Cersei just to die in her arms.” The memory of doing just that felt like something that had happened to someone else. Someone deserving of the title stupidest Lannister.

Tyrion looked back at the tent, at Davos still seated inside staring at their maps as if a solution would miraculously present itself. “Jaime, the timing of your arrival is likely to raise questions.”

Jaime knew the question was coming, and was grateful he could be honest. To a point. “I didn’t kill Daenerys.”

His brother’s relief was obvious. Of course he believed his big brother. And while Jaime misliked the lie, Tyrion had made him complicit in their father’s murder. If someday Arya Stark confessed their plot, Tyrion could vent his anger at the family crypt. Jaime’s bones would soak up his brother’s ire without complaint.

Arya appeared several tents away, beckoning to him. She’d scavenged Unsullied armor, a helm, and a long hooded cloak. 

“Tyrion, I need to go.”

“Do try not to die. I’d rather not tell your lady wife that she’s a widow,” Tyrion tried to jest, but it came out earnest, his eyes sad.

Jaime crouched before his brother and embraced him, just in case. “I’ll do my best.”

As soon as Tyrion’s arms slipped away from him, Jaime rose and strode toward Arya. They were starting to attract notice, which Jaime would rather avoid. The Kingslayer and the slayer of the Night’s King, villain and hero, and neither expected here on the cusp of battle. 

“Are those for me?” he asked, taking the helm from her hands. 

“Do you speak Valyrian?” she asked tartly, knowing his response.

“I take it you do?” Jaime followed as she led him to the edge of the Northern camp. The Dothraki tents were still pitched, but they and their horses were gone. In the distance, he could hear the pounding of hoofbeats. Not many had survived the initial charge in Winterfell, but enough to terrify a few Lannister soldiers. Perhaps the Golden Company as well, if enough smoke shrouded their charge to make their numbers difficult to count.

“Valar morghulis,” she said fluidly.

“Even I know that one,” Jaime scoffed.

She raised an eyebrow. “Then you know the correct response?” When Jaime shook his head, she said, “Valar dohaeris. All men must die. All men must serve.” They hid partially behind a supply wagon while Arya hastily donned the Unsullieds’ studded leather shirt and a helm that covered her face. Jaime put on the cloak but left the hood down. Better they concentrate on his face. Then they might not notice the sword still strapped to his hip.

Next to the sprawling Dothraki camp, the Unsullied camp was aggressively neat, tents arrayed in perfect rows, evenly spaced with nothing out of place anywhere. Tywin Lannister would have appreciated the Unsullied, with their unshakable loyalty and obedience. 

Arya ducked into an empty tent and returned with a discarded spear and a length of rope. 

Jaime eyed her. “So I am to be your prisoner?” 

“Did you have a better plan?” 

“You’re rather short for an Unsullied,” he pointed out, but held out his hands. 

“I don’t expect they’ll live long enough to notice.” She plucked the glove from his golden hand, then looped a rope around both hands loosely enough that he could easily break free. If the Unsullied didn’t recognize his face, they would certainly remember his hand. If he returned to Winterfell, perhaps Jaime would ask Gendry to blacken the thrice-damned thing. 

In the distance, the Dothraki screamed their battle cry. Jaime shuddered. He’d heard it twice before, once as their enemy and once as their ally. He’d rather not fight them again. Were the Golden Company already waiting at the gates? Or were the Lannister soldiers only now frantically turning the massive wheels that closed the gates? 

The light dimmed for a moment, and then Jaime’s skin began to crawl. A long dark shadow swept over them, and Drogon sailed overhead. He wheeled on the early morning winds, clearly riderless. He dove beyond the trees perhaps a quarter mile away, further from the city, out of reach of the scorpions, and came up with a sheep in his claws. How long before the dragon began hunting men? How long before it realized that the city held a nigh inexhaustible supply of food? 

Jaime tore his gaze away as the dragon carried its prey toward the bay. Arya met his eyes with her own concern. “Hurry.”

Jaime led Arya swiftly toward the Unsullied command tent. He’d seen it enough times in his previous visits, on other days, other nights, that he found it easily. It wasn’t even his first time there as a prisoner. Arya trailed behind, prodding him with her spear whenever one of the few soldiers left behind took notice of them. 

“You don’t have to actually stab me,” he grumbled as they approached. She hadn’t broken skin yet, but she would if he stumbled or slowed his pace. 

The guard outside the command tent, barely larger than the other tents but bearing Daenerys’s three-headed dragon standard, snapped to attention. The difference between that and standing at rest was barely discernible. 

Arya fired off a quick stream of Valyrian in a low, guttural voice that fairly imitated the eunuchs. Arya’s own voice was low for a woman’s anyway, a surprise in such a petite girl but useful now. 

The guard responded, but Jaime heard confusion in his voice.

Arya answered him, yanking up Jaime’s bound hands, the gold shining in the early morning light. Jaime heard “Lannister” and “Kingslayer,” and the guard stepped aside. As he did, Arya twisted her spear up under his helm, taking him in the throat, and shoved his corpse away from the entrance. 

Arya pushed Jaime ahead of her, maintaining their ruse. The interior of the tent was dim, and it took a moment for Jaime’s eyes to adjust. They found Jon alone in the tent, tied to a stake driven into the ground. He looked dazed, a deep gash in his temple still oozing blood. 

His brow furrowed. “Lannister?” 

Jaime yanked his hands free of the ropes and plucked Arya’s dagger from its sheath as she pulled off her helm. He leaned down and cut Jon’s ropes as the boy stared at his sister. 

“Arya, what’s going on?” 

“We’re rescuing you.” She grinned and quickly searched the tent for Snow’s sword as Jaime helped Jon to his feet and handed him the cloak. 

Jon looked back and forth between them, more confused than usual when encountering them together, but Jaime could hardly blame him. “Pull up the hood, Snow, and let me play Kingsguard one last time.”

Jon obeyed, and Arya pressed his sword into his hand. The cloak wouldn’t fool anyone for long. Neither would Arya’s borrowed armor.

Arya was first out of the tent. She barely made a sound when the spear went right through her. 

And for the first time in his long years as Kingsguard, Jaime died defending a king. 

 

* * *

  
Jaime moved slowly from rock to rock, staying in the darkest shadows. Daenerys’s guards were intent on her speech as she explained to Varys precisely why he would die tonight. The man looked resigned, but no less certain of his convictions. 

The dragon queen was firm in her convictions as well, and scared. Others might not hear it, but Jaime recognized her bravado, the mask she wore so no one would doubt her commands. Jaime had worn the mask of the Kingslayer for so long it had felt like his true face until he met Brienne. 

His captor, his comrade, his commander, his wife. Still his wife. The day he’d taken for granted for so long had not returned with his death at the hands of the Unsullied. Jaime had woken wedded and bedded, and stolen from his marriage bed in the dead of night as before. His note was perhaps better this time, but still, not enough to make up for leaving her. 

Jaime watched Varys burn, watched Daenerys’s reaction. She didn’t flinch from what she’d done, but then, she’d done this before. But he saw no pleasure in her lovely face, only hurt. Betrayal cut this one deep. She turned away, in the end, when Drogon snapped Varys’s charred corpse in two and ate the pieces, noisily crunching bones in its jaws. Her father would have watched every moment. 

Jon Snow’s reaction was revealing as well. Jaime recognized the carefully blank expression and vacant stare of the one-time King in the North. Was the boy standing atop the Wall in his mind, or running with his white direwolf? Tyrion looked ill, but of course he was the one who’d betrayed Varys. If only his brother knew the horror he’d bought with his friend’s life. They had been friends, to Jaime’s surprise, as much as two men so mired in the game of thrones could be. 

This was madness. Arya had agreed as much, but she’d gone along with his plan anyway. They’d parted on the beach, Jaime going to the cave and Arya making her way into the fortress. She would wait for the right moment to strike, after Jon spoke to Daenerys. This time she would make sure she was seen entering the queen’s chambers, bringing mulled wine or something to eat. It would make the killing more difficult, but remove suspicion from Jon Snow. At least Jaime hoped it would. 

Meanwhile Jaime waited for the queen to leave so he could kill her dragon. Cersei had focused all her defensive efforts on countering the dragon. She wouldn’t expect a small force of Unsullied pouring into the castle from the tunnel at the base of the cliff. She wouldn’t expect a handful of soldiers to open the gates to the allied army not long after dawn. At least Jaime hoped so. Arya would communicate the plan to Jon and Davos when she reached King’s Landing. She could row the boat alone. She didn’t need him. 

Jaime’s part in the plan ended here. If by some miracle he made it out of the cave, he would join Arya at the boat, but she was not to wait for him. She, at least, must get away. His plan was foolhardy, more than likely doomed to failure, and based on nothing more than pillow talk. One night Brienne had told him a tale from the Age of Heroes, about Ser Galladon of Morne, a town long gone to ruin on the northeast coast of Tarth. Ser Galladon was known as the Perfect Knight, a man so virtuous that the Maiden herself fell in love with him. As a token of her love, she gave the knight a magic sword, the Just Maid. And with that sword, Ser Galladon slew a dragon. 

It wasn’t much to go on, but the smallfolk regarded Valyrian steel as magical because its edge never dulled. The few Valyrian blades had been far from the dragons during the battle of Winterfell, but a Valyrian dagger had felled the Night’s King. A Valaryian sword ought to do for a dragon. 

He waited, fingers nervously drumming against the rock, his mind refusing to settle, as Daenerys left the cave, Tyrion, Jon, and the Unsullied trailing behind her. As soon as they reached the stone stairway to the fortress, Jaime moved. 

He wasn’t on horseback this time, wielding a spear on a burning battlefield, but the stakes were just as dire. Jaime stalked toward Drogon, sword drawn, using the cover of darkness as he slipped silently around the rocks that littered the entrance to its cave lair. The sand was littered with blackened bones. 

He adjusted his grip on Widow’s Wail, considering where to strike. The eyes were the safest bet, but aiming there would put him directly in the path of the flames and might not kill the beast, only enrage it. The throat, then? Once Tyrion had mentioned that a scorpion bolt had taken Rhaegal in the throat. It would have to do, if Jaime could reach it.

He sent a silent prayer to the Warrior. _ Please let this fucking work. _ And he stepped from the cover of the last boulder between him and Drogon. The dragon was no more than 20 feet away, curled up in the cave entrance, its eyes closed. Its flank rose and fell slowly, its black scales catching the light and its breath steaming from its nostrils. Wickedly sharp horns armored its head, red spikes running the length of its spine. It was beautiful in the way of many deadly things, crafted by the gods to remind mortal men just how very small and insignificant they were. Its throat was exposed on the left side, so he approached from that direction, picking his way carefully across the sand. 

Five feet away, its nostrils started quivering, and Jaime froze. He was quick on his feet, but not that quick. The dragon was massive, larger now than it was when he’d foolishly tilted at the damn thing on the goldroad. He could picture it now, Aegon the Conqueror astride Balerion the Black Dread melting the massive fortress of Harrenhal like candlewax. Drogon was nearly as large as Balerion now.

Suddenly Widow’s Wail felt small in his hand. It would be no more than a pinprick to this beast. But he’d seen men die from a well-placed prick, as long as it spilled enough blood. 

Smoke billowed from Drogon’s nostrils, and the beast’s great eyes opened. Immense, red, and full of an alien intelligence. The eyes narrowed, focused on him, and a growl rumbled from its throat, hot, rank breath washing over Jaime. 

He lunged, the point of his sword skidding down the black scales, and Jaime threw his entire weight into turning the point up, catching between two scales and pushing as hard as he could. Widow’s Wail sank deep into the dragon’s flesh, and suddenly Jaime was flying across the sand, the beast bellowing in fury. 

The starry sky above vanished as his view filled with sharp, gleaming teeth, the stench of rotten meat making his eyes water. 

He could just see the blade still lodged in the dragon’s throat, barely a trickle of blood escaping around it. A huge foot came down around his body, claws caging him in, helpless.

Fire gathered in the beast’s throat, and rushed toward him on a wave of heat. 

Jaime screamed. 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Jaime could still smell the dragon’s breath when he woke, his heart thumping fit to burst from his chest. 

He would never mock Clegane’s fear of fire again. 

He rolled out of bed slowly, careful not to wake Brienne. By now he wasn’t surprised to see their wedding clothes strewn on the floor. 

He should write his note. He should be honest this time.  _ The days to come will be hard, lady wife. I must ride south to stop Cersei and Daenerys from finishing what Aerys started, and I will not risk dragging you into the grave with me.  _ No, such a missive would only spur Brienne to ride south at his heels. He couldn’t keep Arya alive, nor Jon Snow, nor anyone else he’d tried to protect, and certainly not Brienne. The memory of her bloody mouth and blank eyes had not faded as others had. The coppery taste of her blood on his lips lingered when he thought on it too long. 

Jaime dressed and donned his armor, and made his way to the godswood instead. He could still see the footsteps leading around the heart tree, to where he’d wed Brienne earlier that day, weeks ago now, but he couldn’t think about that now. He stopped before Bran.

Jaime let the cold, clean air of the godswood fill his lungs. He tipped his face up to the sky, blood red leaves and shadowy grey-green sentinel needles framing the wash of stars above. The stars weren’t so different here from those in Casterly Rock, only more numerous. 

“Who chose me? The old gods, the three-eyed raven, or the boy? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. You’ve all spilled my blood.” Jaime dropped to his knees in the snow. 

Bran rested against the tree’s smooth white trunk, unmoving as always, his face still pale against his dark hair. He looked no better but no worse than the last time Jaime had seen him. The solemn face in the bark above him seemed to weep, red sap flowing like blood over its crudely carved features.

“You should have chosen someone else. I’ve tried every path open to me, and failed every time. I don’t know what to do now.”

“I thought you didn’t pray.” 

Brienne stood behind him in her long black robe, her arms crossed as if hugging herself. Her hair was still wild from his hands, her lips swollen from his kisses. His bride, but not the content, well-pleasured woman he’d left in their bed. She looked uncertain, hurt, and rightly so. 

Jaime slowly got to his feet, brushing the snow from his breeches. “I didn’t. I don’t.” That wasn’t strictly true. He’d prayed occasionally over the years, but never for himself. Why would the gods bother with him? He was bound for the seven hells if they existed. He was fairly certain they didn’t.

He turned to face her, and Brienne took in his armor and heavy hooded traveling cloak. “You’re leaving.” She sounded stunned. 

“I have to.” They’d had this conversation so many times, it felt inevitable. Jaime took a step toward her, but she backed away. 

“You said you would stay. You lied to me.” The steel in her voice was enough to make him glad she wasn’t armed. Brienne, for all her understanding of his sins and faith in his honor, was not the most forgiving of women. That much she and Cersei had in common. 

“Lannisters lie,” he reminded her, gently. 

The distance between them vanished, and Brienne’s warm hands cupped his face. Still so gentle with him, even now. “Not to me.” She swallowed hard, her eyes shiny. “How could you … without a word …” She dragged in a horribly shaky breath. “Did you mean any of it?”

His hand came up to circle her wrist, his thumb rubbing the back of her hand, and he wished he wasn’t gloved. “I mean to protect you, as I always have.”

Her hands slid from his face, out of his grasp. “You can’t send me away this time, so you’ll leave me behind?” The hurt in her voice was unmistakable.

“If it keeps you from harm, yes.” He’d sent her from King’s Landing for her protection more than Sansa’s, he’d never lied to himself about that. She’d escaped Riverrun on her own, but he’d agreed to send her away with the Blackfish’s army if she’d succeeded with Ser Brynden. He’d never thought it likely, but he would have done it, no matter how much it would have enraged Cersei.  

Brienne’s mouth set in a firm line, that mulish expression he’d first loathed and then missed when they were parted. “I made a vow. So did you. We’re not … what we once were, Jaime. You’re my husband. If you go, I go.”

“You’ve given your vow to Lady Sansa. I won’t ask you to forsake that for me.” This was his only defense, setting one vow against another. He’d told her, so long ago at Riverrun, how swiftly they tangled, knotted, one action pulling against another until she would be caught just as much as he had been, breaking oaths no matter what he did. 

Her fingertips brushed the black lion on his armor, dropped to rest briefly on the pommel of his sword. Her eyes met his. “Lady Sansa released me from her service before we were wed. She said when the war ended I should see to the needs of my own House. Podrick will stay on with her household guard.” At the mention of Pod, the first hint of sadness crept into her eyes. 

Jaime should have anticipated that. Lady Stark had weathered the rumors of her sworn sword bedding the Kingslayer, but keeping a Lannister in her service would not endear her to her bannermen, no matter how the war ended.

Brienne drew her robe around her more tightly, and Jaime suddenly realized how cold she must be. He’d been so focused on her that he’d ignored the godswood and the cloak of night around them. He reached out and touched her arm, feeling her shiver. “We should go inside. You’re not dressed for the cold.”

Brienne pulled away from him. “Why are you so determined to ride south alone? I would release you from your vows if you regret them so much. You needn’t die to escape me.”

“My only regret will be if you die beside me in this thrice-damned war, Brienne,” Jaime growled. “This is my penance or my redemption, the gods only know, but my sins are not yours. My sister will die in King’s Landing, perhaps my brother too, and my fate lies with them. I would not take you to the seven hells with us. Whatever kingdoms are left when this bloody war ends will need good leaders. They will need you.” 

“ _ I _ need you. If the gods want you, they’ll have to get through me first.” Her expression was so fierce, so possessive and determined, it broke Jaime’s heart. She meant it. She’d saved him so many times in the Long Night, screaming her defiance as her blade dispatched his foes.

“Say that again and I’ll tie you to our bed and ride south alone, stubborn wench,” Jaime snarled. “If you are so determined to come, dress and meet me in the yard. But you must promise to put your vows as a knight ahead of those as a wife. Can you do that?” Once she knew what was at stake, she would understand that his life was nothing compared to an entire city. She was too honorable not to place the lives of innocents above his.  


Brienne bit her lip, her gaze darting between his face and his sword. Finally she grasped his pommel, the sword that made her a knight. “Yes.”

“Then go, I’ll be waiting, but we must ride now.”

“I must tell Lady Sansa something. I can’t simply disappear in the night.” Brienne looked stricken at that thought.

“Tell her Lord Bran is sending us south.”

Brienne’s eyes widened. “I won’t lie to her, Jaime.”

Jaime glanced back at the boy, cold and silent and more powerful than anyone could imagine. “You won’t be lying. Bran set this in motion, and I must finish it.”

 

* * *

  
His wife could always be quiet. Her stubborn silence had infuriated him in the Riverlands. Jaime had kept up a constant stream of prattle throughout his days on her leash, as much to keep himself sane as to irritate her into making a mistake. All she’d ever done was knock him on his arse for his trouble, yanking his ropes hard enough to make him stumble. She’d never let him near her swords until that moment on the bridge. 

If he’d let her silence stand then, would Bolton’s men have caught them? Would they have continued south uninterrupted, his hand intact, his faith in his own importance unshaken, his loyalty still tightly bound with the name Lannister? What would Jaime have thought when they heard of Catelyn Stark’s death? Would Brienne’s grief have moved him? 

He knew the answers. He would have mocked her tears, even as the details of the Red Wedding sickened him. He would have sent her back to her father without Sansa as soon as they arrived in King’s Landing, and ignored any twinge in his heart that said a maid like her deserved better. A maid like her should not exist, nowhere near the black-hearted rogue he’d become. 

That was the worst part. He’d known exactly how far he’d fallen, how his brothers in white would have sneered at him, spat ‘Kingslayer’ in his face and thought themselves superior even with the blood on their own hands. Jaime Lannister had always known the price of his honor, and he’d paid it gladly each time he buried himself between his sister’s thighs. 

Now, riding in the frigid dark, the winds of winter blowing snow south at their heels, Jaime kept his own silence. Brienne didn’t need to say a word. Her eyes asked every question on her mind.  _ What are we doing? What did Bran Stark order you to do? _

Jaime had no answers, so he kept his mouth closed. Except at night, in the few hours he allowed them to rest. Then they huddled together beneath their meager blankets in one of the shelters he’d found in his many travels south. Brienne only looked at him quizzically when he unerringly found abandoned cottages and barns with fodder for the horses, even if they were well out of sight of the kingsroad. 

In the flickering firelight, the silence filled with soft sighs, panted breaths, the rustling of clothes as she rode him, his hand roaming her skin beneath her shirt, his breeches unlaced only enough to free him. It was too cold for anything more, and they were too tired to draw it out as they might have otherwise, but Jaime needed this and Brienne seemed to as well. She’d come into his arms easily enough, kissed him and touched him without hesitation. He was hers to do with as she would. 

His eyes drifted shut far sooner than he wished. The drumbeat of their doom beckoned them south, and the dawn would come all too soon. 

 

* * *

They’d slept in the saddle as much as out of it, and Jaime’s arse was sore and his eyes gritty when they arrived at the Inn at the Crossroads. The waning moon was high in the sky, the price of a few hours dozing that afternoon under a tree while Brienne snared a rabbit for their meal. 

“Why are we stopping?” Brienne asked, her voice hoarse from disuse and cold. 

“It’s time you knew what we’re up against, and I’d rather not tell the tale twice,” Jaime said, knowing he was only creating more questions in her mind.

They stabled the horses, managed to secure a room for the night, and bought a late-night supper of hard cheese, cider, and that morning’s bread, already going stale. 

Jaime surprised Brienne by only tossing in their saddlebags into their room and re-locking the door. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

Jaime just went down the hall and knocked on Clegane’s door. Brienne’s relief at seeing Arya kept her from listening to their conversation too hard, until Clegane was seated on the floor, Jaime before the fire, Arya on the bed, and Brienne insisting on leaning against the door. 

“We haven’t much time,” Jaime began, all eyes on him. “In three days, Daenerys Targaryen will burn the city of King’s Landing to ash, and Bran Stark has sent me to stop it.”

“You can’t know that, Jaime. Bran doesn’t see the future,” Brienne said patiently. Of all of them, she’d spent the most time with the Three-Eyed Raven, and yet Jaime knew she was wrong. 

“I’ve seen it,” he countered. “Many times.” He stood and moved aside from his chair. “Sit, my lady. I suspect you’ll need to in a moment.”

Brienne gave him a look, chiding him for assuming any weakness in her, but her eyes were shadowed and she’d nearly fallen out of the saddle this afternoon. She took his seat and Jaime stood by the door. 

The dagger in Arya’s hands caught the light as she tested the tip of the blade against her thumb. “Why should we believe you, Lannister?”

Jaime stared right back at her. “Because I know that your dancing master was the First Sword of Braavos. I know the face you wore at the Twins. And I know how many times it took you to kill the Night’s King.” 

“The fuck you—”

“Shut up, Sandor.” Arya’s voice was a whipcrack. She leaned forward, her eyes intent on his face. “How many times have you failed?”

Jaime’s smile was bleak. “Too many.”

“What are you talking about?” Brienne asked, her gaze darting between Arya and Jaime. 

Arya was the one to face her. “My brother is making Lannister relive the battle in King’s Landing until he saves the city. Just like he made me relive the Battle of Winterfell until I killed the Night’s King.”

“That’s not possible,” Brienne murmured.  

“Believe them,” Clegane said grudgingly, “or the little wolf will start telling you all the bloody horrible ways you died.” He shuddered. 

Brienne turned to Arya, the question unasked on her lips. 

“You tried to kill the Night’s King. Failed. Twice.” The words poured from Jaime’s lips before Arya could speak. 

“You remember this?” Brienne still sounded more skeptical than convinced. 

“No. She told me. Another night we were here.” Jaime hesitated. He’d thought about this, on the ride south. How to prove to Brienne that he wasn’t lying. “Just like you told me, the last time you came south with me, about why you hate roses.” 

Brienne’s face paled beneath her windburn. She’d told him about her failed betrothal to a hedge knight late one night in their tent, not far from King’s Landing. The callous fool had taken one look at the tall, awkward girl too nervous to even look at him, and tossed a rose in her face. 

“Why’d you come to us?” Clegane asked, breaking the silence. “I’m killing my brother. I don’t fucking care about anything else.” 

“And I’m killing Cersei,” Arya echoed. 

Jaime looked at all of them in turn, and admitted, “I need help. I don’t know what to do next, and I’m running out of time. Bran is getting weaker.”

“Tell us what you’ve done,” Brienne suggested. Her expression was strange, calculating in a way she normally wasn’t. Putting together the pieces and seeing an entirely different picture than she’d expected. Or perhaps she’d expected more reaction to Arya’s desire to kill Cersei. 

“Hold on, I need a fucking drink,” Clegane said, hefting his bulk from the bed and crossing to pick up a flagon of ale from a table. Jaime expected him to pour some into the cup beside it, but Clegane took the entire flagon with him. Pity, Jaime could have used some of that.

“Bran summoned me to the godswood,” he began. “He asked me to move him to the heart tree, so I did. And then I was looking down at him, and myself. There was someone else with us. A tall boy, about the same age as Bran, maybe a bit older. I didn’t know him. He was thin, ill, and his hands were burning.”

Arya cocked her head to the side. “That didn’t happen to me.”

Jaime ran his hand through his hair, tugging at the strands until it hurt. “I’d forgotten about that.” He laughed bitterly. “He said I would know when it was over.” And then he held up a flaming sword. How in seven hells had Jaime forgotten that? The only flaming swords he’d ever seen were carried by Thoros of Myr in tournaments, the blade coated with wildfire, and the arakhs during the Battle of Winterfell. 

His wife was watching him closely, and Jaime now had to recount roughly 40 times rising from Brienne’s bed to go to his sister. He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. He’d rather slit his own throat than hurt Brienne that way. But he owed her the truth, as soft as he could make it.

So Jaime told his story, his eyes never leaving Brienne’s even when Arya or Clegane asked him questions. He kept his account of his deaths defending Cersei as brief as he could, and glossed over many of them. There was nothing to be learned there, only his final lesson, that she couldn’t be saved. 

He told them how he betrayed her, and how her death and the army’s surrender didn’t stop Daenerys from burning the city. He swallowed the memory of Brienne’s death, of their wedding, of his panic over his lost day. And then he told them about going to Dragonstone, Arya killing Daenerys, and him failing to kill Drogon. 

The fire had burned low as he talked, and he was stiff and tired. Clegane’s flagon was empty, the food Jaime had bought long gone. 

“Kill the dragon first. You’ll need more than one man to do it,” Clegane finally said.

“Poison,” Arya suggested. 

Jaime turned to look at his wife, curious what she would say now. Her expression was inscrutable as she studied Arya and Clegane’s faces. She turned to Jaime. “You tried to reason with your sister.”

Jaime nodded. “More than once.” Many times, in many ways. It always failed. “She wanted the throne more than she wanted to live.”

“You talk about her as if she was already dead.” Her voice was soft, confused.

“She is. She will be. Nothing I do changes that.” Jaime had made his peace with that.

Brienne shook her head. “But she’s not. And neither is Daenerys. You’ve done everything you could to change the events around her, even killed her, but you’ve never even tried to talk to her.”

Arya laughed at that, and Clegane joined in. “She fucking wants his head on a spike,” the Hound reminded her. “She’d burn him in the throne room with every last noble cunt in the seven kingdoms there to watch him scream if she could.”

Jaime nodded. “She’d never listen to me, Brienne. She heard all she needed when Robert named me Kingslayer.”

“She listened to me.” Brienne’s expression had gone stubborn again.

“She listened because Sansa and Jon agreed with you. To go against them would have made her look weak,” Arya said dryly. The girl understood more than just which end of her sword to use. She’d outplayed Littlefinger, after all. 

“Brienne, if I arrive at Dragonstone the night before the battle, she’ll think the North has turned against her. She’ll drag me out to the beach and serve me to Drogon as dessert.”

Horror flickered across Brienne’s face, but she set her jaw and stared at him. “Then I’ll talk to her.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

“No.” Perhaps if he said it enough, Brienne would listen.

“If you’ve contrived a better plan in the last hundred leagues, I’ve yet to hear it.” Brienne lay more wood on the fire as it popped and smoked. Their hobbled horses pawed at the ground, seeking the grass beneath the crust of snow. 

She was right, which galled him almost as much as her implacable resolve to personally talk Daenerys Targaryen out of burning King’s Landing to ash. Perhaps he’d spent too much time with Arya of late. All his plans relied on subterfuge and murder. Still, his wife expected reason to carry the day. She believed that rulers put their subjects ahead of their own desires. Jaime did not. 

Jaime changed tactics. If she would not obey his command, then he would use her reason against her. “How many times did I beg Aerys to change his course? How many times did I tell him not to trust my father? All day, Brienne, and he never wavered.”

Brienne glared at him, stubborn as a mountain goat but far more pleasing to his eye. “Are you your father, Jaime?” she challenged, a glint in her eyes that usually led to sparring in the yard or in their bed.

No, Lord Tywin would look down his nose at Brienne and remind her that she ought to be producing an heir, not leading his foolish son into battle on behalf of Lannister enemies. “Aerys never had a dragon. It’s different, killing a man from afar. Your island must have had raiders. Fighting ship to ship, you don’t have to see your enemies’ faces. That’s how it is on dragon back. When the city surrenders, she can’t tell friend from foe, so she burns them all and calls it liberation.”

“Then we approach her on the ground, where she must look us in the eyes.” Brienne’s voice was firm, with the edge of irritation he recalled from the long-suffering septa who’d been tasked with teaching Jaime his letters as a child.

Jaime was weary of these arguments, too. They’d had them every night and often during the day, until Arya and the Hound had been quite happy to take their leave from the squabbling knights at Brindlewood. Jaime and Brienne rode east across rutted farm tracks toward Rook’s Rest, while Arya and the Hound headed straight for King’s Landing. They had their own parts to play, in the unlikely case that Daenerys did not burn the city this time.

“I’m sure she’ll be gracious and understanding just as long as it takes to summon the Unsullied to execute us alongside Varys. Perhaps she’ll burn Snow and Seaworth and Tyrion for good measure,” Jaime countered. 

Brienne considered that. She picked idly at the remains of her dinner, stale bread and a few slices of mealy apple purchased at the last inn they’d passed. “You must have seen something unlike her father in her.”

“By the end he would not let the servants cut his hair or nails or shave him, he so feared assassins. Daenerys still lets her maids dress her hair, so I suppose she is not so far gone yet,” he answered with all the flippancy he could muster. 

Brienne huffed her annoyance and looked away. The firelight played across her fair skin, showing him every flicker of emotion she couldn’t hide. She was too practical to expect all would be well when this was all over. War was not so kind. That wasn’t so difficult to bear when you had nothing to lose. But now they both did. 

Jaime was long accustomed to the feeling, but his wife was not. Even her strong shoulders were not made to bear this weight. “We’ve talked this into the dust, Brienne. You have no idea what to say to Daenerys. You may vouch for Lady Stark, for Jon Snow, for me if you truly wish to stoke her anger, but this isn’t your war. When this is over, the realm will need leaders who value honor and loyalty above all.”

Her eyes met his. “Not above all.” 

“I’m not Renly. I won’t let you fall on your sword for my sake.” Jaime despised the vehemence in his voice, but trying to sway Brienne from her course was like trying to dig through the Wall with a spoon. He put his arm around her as best he could with both of them armored. 

Brienne’s glare softened. “How do you live with this?”

Jaime tried to smile for her, failed. “Not well.”

“Then why do you bear it alone?” She tried to hide it, but hurt laced her voice. “The stories you’ve told. I’m not in them, not in King’s Landing.”

Jaime pressed his face against her shoulder, not caring how cold her armor was against his cheek. For a long time he couldn’t find the words. “You died there once,” he finally said, barely a whisper.

Brienne turned her head and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You charged me to protect the innocent. You made me a knight, and you asked me to put those vows above the ones I made to you.” 

“When have you ever listened to me?” Jaime asked with a bitter chuckle.

She sighed. “We should rest. Come keep me warm.” 

Brienne stood and Jaime followed. He meant only to remove their armor to make sleep more comfortable, but once they were close beneath the furs Brienne reached for his laces and Jaime reached for hers. He remembered their fight in the yard at Winterfell, and his regret that they’d never done this, never come together under the stars with only the night to witness it. And then all he could think of was his wife. 

They moved together slowly, his skin sliding hot over hers, her leg wrapped over his hip, pulling him deeper inside her. Brienne was his match in strength and height, more than his match really, but her hands, even at their most demanding, were still gentle, still full of care for him. Her eyes were dark as the night sky, her soft skin rose and gold in firelight. Her kisses were more practiced than they had been that first night but just as sweet. Jaime watched her face as she fell apart beneath him, her eyes dark and hazy and still so surprised to find herself here, with him, like this. His own pleasure shook him, carried him away into the first restful sleep he’d had since leaving Winterfell.

 

* * *

  
Jon Snow looked supremely unhappy to see them, but not surprised. “Sansa sent a raven,” he said brusquely as they followed him down a dim corridor of Dragonstone. He said no more as they went up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, and finally to a simple chamber with a single bed, two chairs, and a blessedly roaring fire in the hearth.

“Then you know why we’ve come,” Brienne prompted. 

Snow grimaced. “Sansa only said this was Bran’s doing.”

“Then you understand that Lord Bran wouldn’t have sent us if it wasn’t important,” Brienne told him. 

“Then tell  _ me_,” Jon snapped. “This is not a good time to speak to the queen.” 

“It’s the only time,” Jaime countered. “Come morning it will be too late.”

Jon shut the door behind them. “Tell me what you mean to discuss. We need Daenerys tomorrow. I will not have you upset her.”

“I’d imagine the death of her dragon has quite upset her already. And Missandei,” Brienne said with quiet sympathy. She was still so formal with the Starks, trusted but not friendly as Ned Stark had been with his household guard. 

“All the more reason not to rub the Kingslayer’s presence in her face,” Jon answered. The boy’s expression was strained. The northern army was tired and footsore, Daenerys’s troops wanted revenge for the fallen Missandei, and Daenerys’s losses kept mounting. She would not be eager to take comfort from Snow if she suspected he wanted the throne for himself. 

The boy deserved a measure of truth, even if Jaime was tired of justifying himself to Snow over and over again. Jaime had only been here once as a Kingsguard, but he knew most of the castle was hewn from living rock. The only passages were the smugglers’ caves currently occupied by a large black dragon. They should be safe from prying ears here. 

“Bran has seen the battle, Snow. The city burns and Daenerys dies.” Jaime did not tell the boy that Jon would hold her body in his arms. Jaime was beginning to suspect that Jon himself killed her. The anguish in his face, the way he held her, just a feeling Jaime couldn’t shake.

“Your sister wins, and you’ve come to tell me how to stop her?” Snow chuckled bitterly. “Why should I believe a thing you say?”

Brienne moved between them. “Would I lie to you?” 

Jon smiled apologetically at Brienne. “You’ll forgive me, my lady, if I think your judgement is compromised when it comes to the Kingslayer.”

Jaime’s face heated, his lone hand itching to curl into a fist, but he calmed himself. Snow wasn’t the enemy here. They would need him. “Stay with us, when I speak with your queen. Hear what I have to say. You can put me in chains when I’m done if you still believe I’m working for Cersei.” 

Jon acknowledged the offer with a nod. He looked tired, resigned. Not nearly so tired as Jaime, though. No one had ever been this tired. “Dany won’t listen to you, Lannister. She won’t even listen to me anymore. She has lived for this day for so long, she cannot see beyond it.”

“I have no great love for her, Snow. You know that. I knew her father, her brother.” Jaime hesitated, gauging Snow’s mood, his willingness to listen and aid them. “Your father, your grandfather.” 

Jon’s gaze snapped up to his, his jaw tight. “How did you—”

“Arya told me,” Jaime cut him off. “But I should have seen it myself. You have your mother’s look, and your father’s heart.”

“I want no part of any of that,” Snow spat. “I’ve told her that.”

“What you want doesn’t matter, King in the North,” Jaime gave his title pointedly. From what he’d heard, fierce little Lyanna Mormont had set that crown on his head. Stories had power, blood had power, and Jon had both in his favor. “What matters is the men who command armies, and whose arse they want on the throne. In truth I don’t care who sits that bloody chair, right now I care only how they get there.” 

Jon eyed him skeptically. “Even if it means your sister’s death?”

Jaime glanced at Brienne, and she squeezed his arm briefly. Reassuring him, supporting him even now. “If you believe nothing else, know that I understand what it is to lose someone you love to her pursuit of the Iron Throne. My sister died long ago. The woman on the throne isn’t her.”

Jon glanced between Brienne and Jaime. “When I leave here, I must go to the beach to witness Lord Varys’s execution for treason. Why risk her wrath tonight, when the mere sight of you will stoke her anger?”

Jaime understood the boy’s point. Truly he did. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here. Bran wants me here, so here I am.” Jaime was swiftly losing patience for all this talk. He itched for a battle, a clear enemy, a problem to solve with sword in hand. Cersei was the one who won battles with secrets and subterfuge, not him. 

Jon Snow turned to leave, to witness the end of the man who had obtained many of those secrets for his sister and her unlamented husband. “Snow, before she burns him, ask Lord Varys what Rhaegar thought of the Mad King in those last years. She may find it enlightening.” 

Jon’s jaw tightened, as it seemed to with every mention of his true parents. If he lived through this war, he would need to find his peace with what they’d done, Rhaegar and Lyanna and that noble fool Ned Stark. Jon only nodded and left them alone in the room. 

He locked the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Grey Worm came to escort them to the great hall of Dragonstone, with four armed Unsullied at his back. Grey Worm’s inscrutable expression was betrayed only by his eyes. Fire and blood, just like his queen. 

Jaime didn’t blame him. If anyone had beheaded Brienne in front of him, Jaime would kill them, too. Yet he still shied from the man’s spear, and watched the other guards closely. He’d been killed too often by those weapons to trust the men wielding them. 

The great hall of Dragonstone was just as Jaime remembered. Dark, austere, and imposing. The throne carved for Aegon the Conqueror thrust up out of the floor, one massive chunk of stratified rock, with a dragon-scale patterned seat hewn in the center. The throne sat high above the hall, atop a series of steps.

Daenerys Targaryen sat on her throne, dainty and lovely in her deep red and black gown, moonlight hair spilling over her shoulders in long waves. Jaime looked for the woman who turned away from Varys’s end, and did not see her.

He aimed a quick, careful glance at Brienne, who was openly marveling at the vast hall around them. Their heavy footsteps echoed in the space. He could only hope she would not fight too hard if Jaime was taken. _ Let her live to fight another day. _

Jon Snow stood on the steps to Daenerys’s left. One of her Dothraki was at her right, arahk in hand. She was all they had left, those few who had survived Winterfell. Jaime had heard tales of the night Daenerys burned the Dothraki khals and claimed their khalasars for herself. The Dothraki claimed she emerged from the flames unburnt. A common tale of the Targaryens, that fire could not hurt them. Jaime had heard enough about the tragedy of Summerhall not to believe such tales.

Tyrion stood on the lowest steps, no doubt a sharp reminder of his queen’s waning faith in him. His eyes were big in his bearded face, concern plain in the look he leveled at his brother. Tyrion would likely council humility here, diplomacy and tact. Those had never been Jaime’s shields. 

“You’ll find me harder to kill than my father,” the queen said, her voice carrying through the room. 

“That wasn’t my intention,” Jaime answered, and tried not to smirk. She wasn’t so hard to kill. A mere slip of a girl had done it.

“Then you must be here to bend the knee, pledge House Lannister to my cause and beg mercy for your crimes.” Her voice was full of disdain, her expression haughty. Anything less than total obedience wouldn’t be enough for her. 

“No.” Jaime saw Tyrion flinch, but hoped no one else had. Brienne’s sharp intake of breath was enough.

“Take their weapons, bring them to me.” Daenerys had mastered the art of command. She spoke as if obeying were the only option, as if she expected every order to be carried out swiftly and without hesitation. Of course she’d been unhappy at Winterfell, in a war council with so many who expected their voices to also be heard. 

Brienne made a noise of protest low in her throat, but Jaime silenced her with a swift look. Gods, he would have to avoid looking at her again. Her expression was impassive as ever, but her eyes shone with love and fear. For him. 

Grey Worm waited while they unbuckled their swordbelts, and brought the swords up the steps to Daenerys on her throne. He took up a position on the steps below her, between his queen and her father’s killer. 

Daenerys’s slim fingers moved over the scabbard that held Widow’s Wail, drew the blade slightly out to examine the steel. “This was not made for you,” she noted, fingering the rubied stag head in the hilt. 

“No. My father had the Stark valyrian blade reforged. He made two swords. I gave mine to Brienne. The other was made for my son.” 

The queen’s eyebrow raised slightly, an amused smile painting her lips. “You claim him?”

Jaime raised his chin. “The Targaryens wed brother to sister for generations, including your parents. You are perhaps the least likely person to condemn me for siring children with my sister.” 

She smiled unpleasantly. “No, I have much and more to condemn you for, Kingslayer.” The name had more bite coming from her, teeth and claws. He had a sudden flash of unwelcome memory: Drogon’s gaping maw and its claws digging into him. 

Jaime kept silent, much as he wanted to react. 

Daenerys’s gaze slid away from him. “Twin swords for two kingslayers, made from the sword of a treasonous rebel. Fitting.” 

He could see Brienne out of the corner of his eye, standing straight and tall as ever. Perhaps only he would detect the tremor in her left hand, the hand that tended to wrap about Oathkeeper’s pommel when she needed comfort or courage. A blotchy flush spread up her neck. She wasn’t embarrassed. She was angry.

“She didn’t kill Renly.” Jaime had thought that tale long disproven.

Daenerys looked down at Oathkeeper, fingers tracing lightly over its gold lions and glinting rubies. She looked up again. “No, she killed Stannis Baratheon, the Usurper’s true heir.”

Brienne shifted uneasily as Jaime turned to stare at her incredulously. “You killed Stannis?”

“Did you tell me about everyone you killed?” Brienne hissed through clenched teeth. 

Jaime had to concede that point. She wouldn’t like that he’d killed Olenna Tyrell.

“Bannerman of one Baratheon, slayer of another, sworn sword to the Starks, defender of a Lannister. Quite the colorful history, Lady Brienne.” Daenerys made Brienne’s history of service sound sordid. 

To his surprise, a faint smile crossed Brienne’s lips. “Cersei Lannister said much the same when we met.” That sounded like Cersei. She would have smiled and sipped wine while she said it, poisoned honey words on her tongue, pleasant until you digested them. 

Daenerys’s mouth twisted in displeasure. She set aside both blades. “Jon Snow tells me that Bran Stark sent you two here to speak to me.”

Brienne looked away from the queen, her eyes catching Jaime’s. “Lord Bran sent Ser Jaime.” 

“Are you the Kingslayer’s keeper or his protector then?” Daenerys asked, that barbed tone back in her voice.  

Before Brienne could confess their marriage, Jaime spoke up. “Bran has seen the battle. He’s seen King’s Landing in flames.”

Jon was watching her now, as was Tyrion. Only Grey Worm remained with his back to his queen, his eyes focused on Jaime. It wouldn’t take much more than one step toward the queen for the Unsullied to throw his spear. 

“He sees the future,” Daenerys snarled. “He could have saved my dragons? Missandei?” She gulped. “Jorah.”

“He sees only flashes, your grace. He can look through the past as if it were a book. The future is not yet written,” Jon explained gently.  

“How convenient, to see only what serves one’s own interests,” she said tartly, and turned back to Jaime. “Bran Stark’s concern is misplaced. I will burn the scorpions on the city walls, and perhaps soldiers if there’s a need. Not the city itself.”

The arrogant certainty in her voice made Jaime want to tell her everything, to see her face when she knew what she’d done, over and over. But all that would do was earn him a spear through the gut, and his head on a spike. Brienne’s beside his. 

“The entire city,” he repeated. “Red flames, and green. Cersei has laced the city with small caches of wildfire, hoping to bring down your dragon. She doesn’t realize how much wildfire is already under the city.” 

“But you do.” Her voice dripped with skepticism.

“I thought Tyrion used it all on the Blackwater, but he must have missed some of Aerys’s stockpile. Give me a map and I can show you where his caches were.”

Daenerys shook her head. “My father never used wildfire.”

Jaime laughed, and Tyrion’s face crumpled. “Never used wildfire? He dipped one of his Hands in it. Chelsted, the mace and dagger. Aerys set him alight in the throne room. Then he chose a bloody pyromancer for his next Hand.” 

Daenerys blanched, and rose to her feet. “He was an old man—”

Jaime took one step toward her, Grey Worm’s spear tipped toward him, and Brienne dragged him back. “An old man whose son planned to set him aside before the Stark girl turned his head.” Jaime’s voice dripped with derision. “Selmy didn’t tell you that, did he? He didn’t tell you about that last day, either, because he wasn’t there. Varys and I told Aerys not to trust my father, but he opened the gates. Tywin sacked the city, and still Aerys refused to surrender.”

“Seize the Kingslayer,” Daenerys snarled.

Two Unsullied grabbed Jaime, shoving Brienne aside. She tried to throw them off, and the remaining guards yanked her away. The Unsullied tossed Jaime to the floor while Brienne struggled to reach him. He knew where this was going. He hoped Snow’s blade was sharp. Or perhaps it would be the arakh. At least the Dothraki knew how to kill a man swiftly. 

“Burn them all.” Brienne’s voice rang out over the clamor. 

Daenerys came down the steps, until she stood beside Grey Worm. “What did you say?” 

Jaime tried to turn his head to look at her, but the Unsullied shoved his face roughly toward the stone floor. “Brienne, don’t.” Stubborn woman would get herself killed alongside him. 

“ _Burn them all_.” Her voice wavered, choked with emotion. “That’s what he said.  _ Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds._”    


Daenerys wasn’t so pretty now. Her teeth were bared and her eyes burned just like her father’s. She was going to kill them, right here, at the foot of her throne, and Jaime wasn’t at all certain he would come back again. 

“My queen,” Tyrion said hesitantly.

Daenerys looked down at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. “I’ve heard enough from you tonight. Hold your tongue, or you won’t have one.”

Jon Snow followed her down the steps, the Dothraki shadowing him. Jaime was sure now that Daenerys feared Snow. She gave her orders to the Unsullied in Valyrian. The Unsullied started to drag him away, but Brienne’s guards held her where she stood. 

Jaime’s boots scrabbled against the stones, catching in the grooves between the hexagonal pieces. Tyrion looked on in horror as the Unsullied dragged him across the floor, close to yanking his arms from their sockets. 

“You’re not like him,” Jaime called desperately. Anything to take her focus away from Brienne.

Daenerys turned her gaze on him, curious despite herself.

“I saw you on the Gold Road. You’re not mad. You know exactly what you’re doing. You just don’t care.” He meant it, every word, and her face flushed red with anger as she listened.

She called out something in Valyrian again, and Grey Worm frowned.  


Jaime’s head snapped forward, and the world went black. 

  
  



	18. Chapter 18

Jaime’s head throbbed. 

He opened his eyes slowly, waiting for the disorientation from his last death to subside. It usually only took a few seconds.

The pain didn’t fade. 

He opened his eyes fully, blinked until everything came into focus. Firelight flickered against the stone ceiling.

No, that was wrong. He turned his head slowly, pain lancing through the back of his skull again. The light came from a torch, fastened to the wall outside bars.

He was in a cell. At Dragonstone.

He hadn’t died. Jaime rubbed gingerly at the back of his skull. His fingers came away tacky with blood. 

“Your lady sang like a bird after you were taken away.” 

He squinted through the bars. Tyrion stood there. “We must stop meeting like this,” Jaime grumbled, rearranging his limbs from the graceless heap he’d been tossed in, until he was sitting propped against the wall. He was still dizzier than he would like.

“In dungeons? I agree,” Tyrion said mildly. “I don’t have a key, so don’t bother asking me to smuggle you out. That’s your trick, not mine.”

“Where is she?” If Brienne had gone ahead with her mad plan to reason Daenerys out of burning the city, she was likely in one of these cells, too.

“In the queen’s solar, I believe. Discussing whatever women talk about, I imagine. Alliances. Tactics. Myrish lace.”

“Don’t jape, Tyrion. Not about this.  _ Where is she?” _

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “The North has soured your humor, Jaime. She is in the queen’s solar. Snow is with them.”

The tightness in Jaime’s chest eased. “Then she’s safe?”

“Safe as anyone can be tonight,” Tyrion allowed. “When will you learn to hold your tongue? I thought you were a dead man when they dragged you out.”  

“So did I.” Jaime looked around the grim cell. Enough space to lie down, no foul smells or obvious rodent droppings, not the worst cell he’d ever occupied. That was reserved for the open-air cage in Robb Stark’s camp, with its frequent direwolf visits. Hash marks denoted some unfortunate fellow’s days of imprisonment on one wall. And on the other wall someone had practiced their letters, scratching them into the stone. He turned his gaze on his brother again. “What happened?”

Tyrion scrubbed a hand over his face and leaned against the bars. “The power of a good story. Ser Brienne spun quite the entertaining yarn about the filthy, crude Kingslayer and how very much she loathed you. The queen loved it.” 

Tyrion’s face grew solemn. “And then she spoke of your maiming, and your delirious confession in the baths of Harrenhal. The queen was not so pleased with that tale. I was rather surprised as well, considering you are my brother and I’d never heard it.” 

“No one had heard it, until Brienne. In truth, I scarcely recall what I told her.” He remembered swooning like a maiden and Brienne catching him. Even then she was a better knight than he. 

“You cut quite the heroic figure, if you don’t mind a Kingsguard slaying his king. Alas, Daenerys does.” Tyrion had always excelled at covering his darker feelings with humor, but his jests could not hide the bleakness in his face. Jaime had never seen his reaction to the queen’s rampage, wasn’t even certain that Tyrion survived the battle, but he thought Tyrion would look much like this. His illusions shattered. Much as Jaime had looked when he saw Cersei’s true face at last, his own dark mirror. 

“It’s good you’re awake,” Tyrion continued. “You’ll be summoned back to the queen soon. If you can hold your tongue perhaps you’ll survive the night.”

“Why is Brienne with the queen, Tyrion? And why are you not?”

Tyrion’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Lady Arya. Jon Snow was not pleased to hear his sister and the Hound had traveled south with you. Snow suggested they discuss the matter in a more intimate setting.”

“Without any Lannisters present,” Jaime suggested.

“Precisely.”

Jaime struggled to hold back a smile. Neither Snow nor the queen were so clever as they believed. And his wife, it seemed, had enough sense to keep the secret of their marriage. “If Snow believes I’ve done something sinister with the little wolf he’s forgotten she can take care of herself. Nor does she blindly follow orders, especially from the likes of me.” 

“I believe I am the one meant to carry tales to our sister, though without Varys’s resources at my disposal I can’t imagine how I would do that. Nor why I would considering Cersei just sent Bronn to kill us.” Tyrion’s bitterness was justified, but unhelpful just now.

“They do realize that I know where Arya is and what she plans to do?” Assuming, of course, that Arya followed the plan. 

Tyrion held up a hand. “Don’t tell me. I am content to sit out this siege in a tent somewhere with a flagon of wine and wait to see whether I shall end this war at the queen’s side or in the dragonpit.”

Jaime smiled at his brother. “If it’s the dragonpit, you won’t be alone.” If the Lannisters were to be wiped from the world in one day, let them be together. 

“What of Cersei?” Tyrion asked quietly, leaning heavily against the bars. There must be a guard, likely Unsullied, standing just out of sight. 

“Cersei would rather die a queen than kneel. Had she fulfilled her promise to go north, there might have been a chance for peace. She might have gone back to Casterly Rock, lived quietly, proved your queen is as merciful as she claims. Now? Someone must pay for the crimes of House Lannister.” 

“And her child?” Tyrion asked. 

Jaime understood his own preoccupation with Cersei’s child, but he’d written off Tyrion’s sudden interest as a tactic to negotiate a surrender. Or perhaps he needed to see the good in their sister as his own queen became more ruthless in her pursuit of the throne. “There is no child, or if there is, it isn’t mine.” In all the times he’d tried to save her, he’d never gotten a real answer about the child. 

Tyrion straightened suddenly, his face taut with strain.

Grey Worm strode into view, two guards at his back. “On your feet.”

Jaime managed the task slowly. The walls were slightly damp, and his hand slid across the stones once, nearly sending him to his knees. Finally he was on his feet, unsteady and dizzier than he’d like, but upright enough for Grey Worm to open the door. Jaime didn’t even mind when both guards seized him by the arms. 

They’d taken no more than a dozen steps, fast enough to make his head spin, when he saw movement in the corner of his eye. Jaime looked back over his shoulder as the guards hurried him forward.

Varys sat in another cell. Grim and silent, but alive, his eyes solemn as they met Jaime’s. Varys nodded once, and Jaime wondered what the spymaster had overheard. What had the eunuch said to stay his execution, at least temporarily? Had Snow asked him about Rhaegar’s relationship with his father? 

Tyrion trailed behind them as they moved through the corridors. Jaime tried to keep track of where they were, but all he could tell was that they weren’t going back to the throne room. The castle was quiet as a tomb, no servants bustling about, the few soldiers on guard standing silently at attention. 

And then Grey Worm opened a door, and the guards bustled Jaime inside. Tyrion followed, his head bowed, as if waiting to be commanded to leave again. The room was large, with a fire in the vast hearth, an immense table in the shape of Westeros dominating the space, and windows at the far end reflecting blurry shapes against the flames. 

The guards left, though Jaime heard no further steps after the door closed. He wondered if they were as bored waiting outside doors as he’d been when he served Robert. 

The queen sat in a large carved chair by the fire. Snow stood to her left, and Brienne, looking blessedly unharmed, stood uneasily on the other side of the hearth. Daenerys’s fire had cooled, though Jaime had no doubt her anger could flare up again in a moment, while Brienne’s fear shone in her eyes. 

Daenerys stood and walked to the vast table. Grey Worm, his dagger the only weapon in the room, moved to stand between the queen and Jaime. “You say that I don’t care. You have no idea the sacrifices I’ve made. My brother, my son, my husband. All to come back to Westeros, all to take back what is mine.”

Jaime turned to face her, but moved no closer. Grey Worm and his dagger were still far too close to Brienne for his taste. “Claimants for the Iron Throne have been dropping like flies these last few years. Are you certain you want it?” 

Alarm flickered across Tyrion’s face, and Brienne’s. 

Daenerys’s gaze never left Jaime. “This is my duty, Kingslayer. My destiny.”

“Robert gave me that name, you know. No one here thought me a hero. The only reason I wasn’t sent to the Wall was because Robert needed my father’s support.” How different the world might have been, if he’d simply taken the black. No Joffrey, no War of the Five Kings. Jaime might have spent the last twenty years ranging beyond the Wall. Then again, he might have met Tormund Giantsbane much sooner, and spent too many hours listening to his vile stories.

“Your lady wife thinks you a hero, the way she tells the tale.”

Jaime froze. Tyrion’s eyes were wide. He didn’t know, yet the queen did. Jaime dragged in a deep breath, turned to look at Brienne. “I wish I was half the man she believes me to be.”

He shouldn’t have looked. Brienne looked as she had in that tent in Riverrun, when they thought they might meet in battle. Others might think her made of stone, but he saw the way her chin trembled, the way her eyes shone. 

Jaime turned away. “Think of me what you will. I don’t regret what I did.”

Daenerys’s eyes narrowed. “You put a sword through an old man’s back. There’s no honor in that, no matter your motives.” 

“Honor?” The word was bitter on Jaime’s tongue. “I thought the Kingsguard were the most honorable knights in the seven kingdoms. I was proud to be one of them. And then I stood by while he killed men he called friends one day and enemies the next. I stood by while he raped your mother. I could not stand by while he burned every man, woman, and child in the capital to spite my father.” 

“You will not stand by in this battle. Tyrion will give you a map and you will mark the caches for me tonight. Then you and Ser Brienne will go to the northern army camp under guard. Tomorrow you will enter the city with the army, and you will find evidence of wildfire. If you cannot prove your claims, there will be consequences.” Her gaze moved to Brienne. 

Dread settled in Jaime’s gut, but he nodded. “Agreed.”

“And if the city surrenders, you will stop the attack?” Tyrion asked.

Jaime had forgotten about those damned bells. The sound had driven him half-mad. 

“Of course. You may go,” she said. “Jon, please stay.”

Snow waited patiently while everyone else left. 

Just before the door closed behind them, Jaime saw Jon approach Daenerys. For a moment, he saw how weary the dragon queen was. He’d seen Cersei drop the facade before, the brittle shell one must wear as ruler, but never Daenerys. She was so very young to have seen and done so much.

Later, they were all quiet as the boat rowed Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion, Jon, and Grey Worm back to the northern army camp near the city. Jaime didn’t feel comfortable speaking around Grey Worm, not knowing his orders from the queen this time. He settled for holding Brienne’s hand in his and leaning against her. 

The longer this farce went on, the more convinced Jaime became that he’d failed again. And he truly had no idea how to proceed. Perhaps there was no way to save the city. If he was wrong about that, the only choice remaining to him was to kill Bran to stop him from becoming king. The thought of that turned his stomach. He was done balancing the fate of the realm on his blade. 

They slept in a tiny tent near Tyrion’s, barely big enough for their pallet, armor piled all around them. Grey Worm still had their swords, and two Unsullied guarded the tent. 

When Jaime finally fell asleep, he dreamed he was back in the throne room of the Red Keep. A massive fire burned in the middle of the floor, smoke soaring up to the vaulted ceiling. On the throne sat Daenerys Targaryen, clad in glittering black and crimson, her father’s gold dragon crown on her head. The flames danced in her eyes.

A cry drew his attention, and Jaime looked up, knowing already what he would see.  _ No, no, no. _ Brienne was held above the flames, dangling from a heavy chain wrapped around her chest. Her boots were smoking and her armor seemed to shimmer in the heat. 

Jaime lurched toward her, but was yanked back by his neck. He scrabbled awkwardly at his throat. A noose held him fast. Jaime leaned forward again, and the rope tightened. He turned and saw that the rope was bolted into the wall. Unsullied and Dothraki lined the walls, watching. 

On the stone floor between them, Oathkeeper lay gleaming in the firelight.

“Jaime, please,” Brienne called, thrashing in her chains. Her face was red in the heat, sweat dripping from her hair. 

He pulled against his bonds, his lone hand stretched as far forward as it could go, but the sword was still well out of reach. As he tried to stretch his foot toward it instead, Brienne started to scream.

Jaime focused on his foot inching toward the sword, but his joints popped and his muscles strained, and still he was perhaps half a foot from reaching the blade. 

Something sizzled as it dripped into the fire. 

Jaime forced himself to look up. Brienne’s boots were nearly gone, flames licking up her breeches. Her feet were cooking, flames growing as she struggled. She’d torn off her gloves and tossed them away, her bare hands scrabbling at the chains, trying fruitlessly to pull herself up the chain, away from the fire. 

Someone threw more wood on the fire, and the flames leapt higher. 

Brienne screamed as the flames licked her feet. 

And Jaime lurched forward again, his throat closing, fingertips closing on empty air. 

He raised his eyes to find the dragon queen watching them. 

She was smiling, just like her father.

  
  



	19. Chapter 19

Morning had dawned murky and cold, and all around the northerners shifted restlessly as they waited outside the Gate of the Gods. Dothraki horses pawed the ground, huffing their unease. Standing still wasn’t their natural state. Meanwhile the Unsullied stood at perfect attention, even Grey Worm, his eyes flitting between the Golden Company ahead of them and the Lannister soldiers on the walls.

Jaime stood at the front of their lines with the commanders: Grey Worm, Jon Snow, Ser Davos Seaworth, and his wife. He saw Harry Strickland on his horse, the sun glinting off ranks of men in gold armor. Cersei must have loved the symbolism of that, her gold buying gold soldiers.  But Jaime could also see all the other times he’d been here, on this cursed day. Ghosts of the frantic smallfolk he’d followed into the city, Cersei atop the walls, Brienne bleeding in the dirt. So many ways this battle could go, and every one leading to the same place. Daenerys and her merciless eyes looking down on her new subjects and choosing to burn them all.

An explosion echoed in the distance, and the Lannister soldiers turned to look. They wouldn’t see anything. Daenerys was too far away, and even Drogon’s massive black bulk in the sky too small to be visible here on the far side of the city. 

If all was proceeding according to plan, Arya and the Hound were in the Red Keep by now, waiting for their moment. 

“Are you certain where those caches are?” Brienne asked quietly. She wore no hood today, her hair bright in the sun. 

“Somewhat,” Jaime hedged. The glimpses he’d had of Aerys’s original caches were twenty years ago. The pyromancers he’d killed after the city fell had been less than eager to tell him anything after a few of their fellows had already disappeared. 

Brienne gave him an incredulous look. “You staked all our lives on proving the existence of the wildfire, and you don’t know where it is?” she hissed. 

Jaime growled in frustration. Snow glanced their way, and Jaime remembered that only Brienne knew he’d been here before. “Bran saw it from above. I’ll find it. It may take time.”

“Time we don’t have,” Snow reminded them. He squinted up into the sky and pointed. “There.”

Jaime followed his gaze. Smoke, rising in the distance. “Right now, Euron’s wishing he chose the other queen.” 

“Aye, he’ll wish he’d never laid eyes on Blackwater Bay by the end. If he’s still alive,” Davos said dryly behind them. Murmurs of agreement rose from some of the northmen around them. 

Euron lived, of course, because weasels like him would abandon their men without a thought. And while he swam to shore, his fleet broke apart like toys and his men screamed and burned and drowned. If there was any justice in the world, the entire Red Keep would come down on the man, denying him a glorious death. He should be crushed to nothing but blood and bone, unlamented and forgotten. But justice was not to be found in King’s Landing. Ask Ned Stark. Ask Oberyn Martell. 

“We defeated death itself,” Brienne said, her voice tinged with the foolhardy bravery of one who’d fought few true battles. “These are only men. They bleed and they die, and they don’t get back up to fight again.”

“They yield,” Jaime said in a carrying voice. “The Lannister troops have all heard the tale of the Gold Road, of Dothraki pouring past their shield wall, of how there is nowhere to run when her dragon rains fire and blood. They will lay down their arms. They will ring the bells in surrender.” Best to remind them now, before the heat of battle was upon them. 

Jon nodded grimly. Grey Worm did not. 

Strickland flinched at every noise from the bay. He’d spook his men before long. The sellswords were well trained, but they still glanced back as the explosions continued in the distance, growing closer. 

Brienne let out of a long, controlled breath at his side. Jaime looked over at her. The breeze was ruffling her short hair, her lips pressed together in a determined line. Her dark armor seemed to drink in the light. When they stood like this before the walls of Winterfell, he’d been certain they wouldn’t live to see the dawn. He’d seen her fight, but never like that. Never when death seemed inescapable and yet she pushed on, never faltering, never giving up. She was still screaming in rage and struggling against the things pulling her down when he cut the dead to pieces to reach her. The bards should write songs of her valor, something more flattering than “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” Songs about her strength, her courage, the fire in her blue eyes.

“Brienne.” His voice came out huskier than he’d expected. 

She turned toward him, just her face, the rest of her still poised for battle, her hand curved over the lion atop Oathkeeper. Her eyes softened looking on him. He must be a sight, travel-worn and dirt smudged into the crow’s feet around his eyes, his hair grown too long. “Jaime?”

“Might I beg a favor from my lady wife before we rush into battle again?” He kept his voice pitched low, just for her. If this all went to the seven hells in a few minutes, he would have her know exactly what she meant to him. If only he hadn’t left the silk from their handfasting in his saddlebag, he could have knotted it around her wrist. Something of him to take into the battle.

That delightful little furrow appeared between her pale brows. She wasn’t a pretty maid in a silky gown, bestowing her favor on a paragon of knightly virtue, and he was sure she’d never been asked for such a thing before. In the only tourney Ser Brienne of Tarth had ever fought, long before anyone thought to bestow a knighthood on her, she’d fought, she’d won, and begged a cloak for her prize. 

A red flush rose up the column of her neck from beneath her armor. “I have nothing to give you.”

Jaime grinned, wicked, as he leaned close. “Oh, but you do, Brienne.” 

That flush staining her cheeks now wasn’t just discomfort or embarrassment. No, her blue eyes had darkened to twilight, to a stormy sea. 

Jaime raised his gloved hand to her cheek and wished it was bare so he could feel her soft skin. His hand drifted back to clasp the nape of her neck and draw her face down to his. His lips found hers, warm and dry until his tongue darted over the seam of her lips and she opened for him. There were men watching, he could feel their eyes, men who might not be disposed to treat a woman who opened her legs for the Kingslayer with any kindness should this battle turn sour. So he kissed her sweetly, with all the tenderness she’d shown him on nights she would never remember, and let her go far sooner than he would have chosen otherwise.

Jaime straightened again, his hand slipping from her neck. He had wanted to kiss her at Winterfell too, when they stood in the cold waiting for the dead, but he’d known better than to try.

Her hand was pressed to his chest, splayed across the lion crafted by the bastard lord of Storm’s End, as she pulled herself back together, swiftly, a knight even now. Brienne’s eyes opened. “You are a good man,” she said, low and fierce, “an honorable knight, and you are  _ mine _ . Don’t forget that.” 

Jaime had no time to counter that argument. An explosion much closer made the men on the wall above start scurrying around, looking behind them, and he knew that Daenerys had begun burning the scorpions. She would be here in moments. 

His hand went to the pommel of Widow’s Wail. 

Strickland was eyeing them across the no man’s land between them, armored in gold and mounted on a beautiful white horse.  _ Did I look like such a great golden fool?  _ If Jaime failed, this horse, bloodied and soot-streaked, might carry a girl through the burning streets an hour from now, perhaps less. 

The gate blew out without warning, stones peppering his armor as he ducked and threw his armor around Brienne. Chunks of stone and splintered wood rained down on the Golden Company in a wash of flames.  Sellswords scattered like leaves on the wind, armor and leather and skin burning as they screamed. 

Drogon soared over them, the Black Dread come again, and wheeled around the attack the walls again. The gate was completely gone, the broad avenue of the Gods’ Way just visible through the smoke and flames, leading straight through the city to the Red Keep. 

Brienne’s eyes were wide in her pale face, but she straightened, brave as ever, unflinching from her duty. Much as he’d come to admire her for it, he wished in this moment that she were not quite so dutiful. 

Grey Worm bellowed a command in Valyrian, and the Dothraki spurred their horses into motion. A wave of horse lords thundered past, the Dothraki waving their arakhs high above and screaming. The few sellswords still on their feet fled for their lives, and Jaime remembered his own men running, burning, butchered by the same woman he was about to place on the throne.  _ I hope you know what you’re doing, Bran Stark. _

Snow drew his sword and started forward. 

“Gods be good,” Davos muttered behind them, and Jaime drew his sword as he saw Brienne do the same. 

The Northern army rolled into the city like a great wave, casting aside all who stood before it. Above, Drogon spewed flame over the walls, burning men and scorpions alike. Jaime didn’t spare that more than a glance. A sellsword was running straight toward them as they surged forward, his sword still raised even as fire engulfed his back. Jaime cut him down with a single slash and called it mercy. 

There were more, as they picked their way through the debris. Screaming men dispatched to the Stranger with a quick thrust, more pouring through the gate from within the city unharmed. Snow was a beast with his bastard sword, its reach making up for the boy’s slighter stature. He was well trained, Ned Stark would have seen to that, and the Night’s Watch had honed those skills. With three Valyrian blades and a host of Unsullied spearmen in their vanguard, they cut through the sellswords, leaving fire and blood in their wake. 

Windows and doors were closed and barred along the avenue, the smallfolk desperate to hide from the invaders. Their fear had its uses. Anyone on the street was a threat, and cut down without hesitation. Jaime saw Brienne take down three gold-armored sellswords in quick succession, her lips drawn back in a snarl. She caught his eye and lunged, running through a man who’d snuck in behind him. 

Another block further into the city, the Golden Company were largely defeated, but the smallfolk were no longer hiding. Daenerys flew low overhead again, spraying the wall on the other side of the gate with great gouts of flame. Men began to dart out of doorways, armed with whatever they had to hand: hammers, axes, kitchen knives, and chunks of masonry. Any who aimed a blow at their troops was cut down. 

A small child screamed at the sight of Brienne and her bloody sword, and he saw the horror in his wife’s eyes. Jaime grabbed her arm and dragged her on. They could not stop now. 

The dragon roared in the distance. They were running out of time. 

There. A narrow alley opened at Cobbler’s Square, and Jaime ducked to the right, toward the Street of Flour, where he’d seen green fire from his perch on the hill. Aerys had long ago hidden wildfire beneath the bakery that supplied Dornish pastries for Princess Elia. 

A hand yanked him back. “Where are you going?” Grey Worm’s face was spattered with blood, his eyes hard. 

“The wildfire. The first cache is this way.” Jaime pointed up the street, toward the Red Keep on the hill. “I’ll meet you in King’s Square.”

Grey Worm shook his head. “No. I go with you.” 

Jaime ground his teeth. Grey Worm was just as likely to stab him in the back as to help him. “Fine. Hurry.”

Brienne started to follow them. “No.” Grey Worm raised a hand toward her. “You stay.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but Jaime shook his head. Reluctantly, Brienne turned back to join the rest of the men. The last Jaime saw of her, she was between Ser Davos and Jon Snow, fighting their way through the square. 

Daenerys would land above King’s Square. Soon.

Jaime pointed down the blessedly empty alley, and he and Grey Worm made their way as swiftly as they could, keeping far from the shadowed doorways where men might hide. Jaime turned left at the next street, squinting at the shop signs as they passed. He hadn’t been down here in years. Robert’s appetites had always run more to strong drink and lusty wenches, so he’d spent far more time on the Street of Silk. Cersei preferred wine, Dornish Red or Arbor Gold, she didn’t care as long as her glass stayed full. 

There. On the left, halfway up the street. Jaime kept his blade drawn, eyeing each doorway they passed until they reached Lemonwood, a large shop with a glass window to display the baker’s wares. The display sat empty today. No demand for sweets on the morning of battle, more’s the pity. The shopkeeper had always tucked a small bag of candied lemon slices into the order for little Rhaenys. 

Jaime tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. 

He backed up, intending to break the window instead, and Grey Worm kicked the door once, then again. The door gave way on the second kick. The shop’s interior was dark and deserted, as Jaime had hoped. The family would be hiding upstairs, or possibly in the cellar. These shops all had cellars to keep foodstuffs cold. The shop smelled sweet and rich. Jaime’s mouth watered even as he heard the dragon roar again. 

“Where?” Grey Worm asked, impatient. 

Jaime glanced around. It had to be in the cellar. “Down,” he said, and pointed to a door in the far wall. Grey Worm found a candle and lit it from the embers in the hearth. 

That door wasn’t barred, but they went down the stone steps carefully, mindful of an angry baker protecting his livelihood or his daughters. Grey Worm was careful to stay behind Jaime, out of reach of his sword. Shadows swam over the walls, but all Jaime saw were shelves filled with sacks of sugar and flour, cool slabs of butter, jugs of honey and molasses. 

“Here,” Grey Worm called, and Jaime turned to see what the other man had found. 

Concealed behind a rack of shelves filled with baskets of eggs, a door was faintly visible. Jaime helped Grey Worm shove the shelves aside, cracking a fair number of eggs on the floor in the process. 

The door did not open. Not even when Grey Worm tried kicking it again. Good old oak, possibly even ironwood, Jaime couldn’t say, only that it barely moved, and Grey Worm looked pained after the second kick.  

“Let me try something,” Jaime said, running his fingers over the door frame and the stones of the walls around it. If the door was barred from the inside, they were lost, but Jaime vaguely recalled the one time he’d shepherded Aerys on a visit to the alchemists’ guild. They had tricks for opening their vaults. Secret switches and hidden catches, like the passages in the Red Keep. 

Grey Worm saw what he was doing and started checking the far side of the door. 

Jaime was crouched on the floor, skimming the last few inches on his side, when he saw Grey Worm stretched tall, poking his spear against the stone atop the door, and the door moved. Not much, just a subtle shift, but Jaime reached over and pushed, and the door swung open. 

Grey Worm actually smiled. Jaime wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the man do that. At best his eyes had brightened in the presence of the translator Missandei. 

Jaime got to his feet, his right knee popping loudly. Grey Worm picked up the candle he’d set down and followed Jaime into the dark space behind the heavy door. 

At first, Jaime couldn’t see anything. The room was small, the ceiling so low cobwebs brushed his hair. And it was cool. If they’d gone through all this for someone’s stash of Essosi fruits or cured meats, he would scream. 

But then Grey Worm came alongside him, and the candle illuminated sturdy shelves lining the back wall, only a few feet in front of them. Each shelf contained several corked and wax-sealed jugs made of heavy green glass. Jaime counted 20 jugs in all, and sighed in relief. Grey Worm forgot to stay behind Jaime and pressed forward. Jaime touched his arm and shook his head. Jaime had. If any of these jars had spilled, the whole room could go up in flames in moments. 

Jaime sheathed his sword and reached out for a jug. It was heavier than expected, awkward to wrestle off the shelving. The jug clinked against another and the second rolled against a third. Jaime held his breath, used his gold hand to steady the shelving as he pulled the jug free and tucked it into the crook of his right arm.

Grey Worm followed as Jaime made his way out of the dark cellar. At the top of the steps, the hairs stood up on the back of Jaime’s neck, and a soldier’s instincts made him duck to the side, both arms wrapped around the wildfire. Grey Worm surged past him and he heard a choked cry. Jaime straightened to find that Grey Worm held the tip of his spear under a terrified woman’s chin. She held a heavy rolling pin over her head with shaking arms, and her dark eyes were huge in the dimness. 

The dragon roared again, much closer. 

“Let her go,” Jaime said slowly. “We’re leaving.”

Grey Worm’s lip curled as he regarded the trembling woman, but he removed his spear. “Next time,” he told her, “don’t hesitate.”

Jaime cursed under his breath as he came out into the street again, Grey Worm behind him. People were leaving the shops, but they barely glanced at Jaime and Grey Worm as they fled, moving away from the Red Keep. Away from the dragon. 

Jaime caught snatches of conversations as people rushed past him. “She’s here.” “The dragon…” “Run.” “...what you can carry.” 

One woman grabbed his arm. “Not that way,” she chided, then took in his dark armor and Grey Worm at his side. She dropped Jaime’s arm and ran with the rest.

Moving against the tide of fleeing smallfolk, Jaime held the jar tightly to his chest, desperately wishing they’d taken two jars, not that he could carry two. One was difficult enough. They came to a crossing and Jaime darted left, Grey Worm right behind him. The side street was far less crowded, but people were streaming away from the center of the city in a panicked rush. Knowing what might come, Jaime didn’t blame them.

They came out onto the God’s Way again in the middle of the Northern army, behind the Unsullied. Far ahead, in the King’s Square, Jaime could just spy Brienne’s fair hair above the sea of dull metal helmets and spears. Beyond their army, he could see a bell tower, and Daenerys, perched on Drogon’s back where he clung to a tiled roof.

Grey Worm called out an order, and suddenly the Unsullied opened a path in their midst. Jaime darted through it, rushing to the front of the column with Grey Worm at his heels. Jon’s anxious face appeared out of the crowd, Ser Davos and Brienne with him. 

“Wildfire,” Jaime confirmed, gesturing at the jug. “There were 20 of these in a hidden room.” He gestured to their right, where the Alchemists’ Guildhall stood. “The pyromancers stashed it all over the city.” 

Jon took the jug and hefted it in his hands. “What do we do with it?”

Jaime straightened his arm, the muscles cramped from holding it so tightly. “Light it, Snow. Show your queen the threat.”

“Light it with what?” Ser Davos asked, and Jaime’s heart sank. 

He tamped down the hysterical laughter that threatened to burst out of him. To save the city from burning, they had to light a damned fire.  

“How would I bloody know? Now excuse me while I tell those fools to surrender.” Jaime turned and stalked across the gap between the Northern forces and the Lannister forces in their crimson and gold. He drew Widow’s Wail and easily picked out their commander. He was at least pretending not to quake in his boots.  

Jaime stopped directly between the two armies. “You know me?” he asked the commander, his voice carrying to both armies. He put every ounce of Lannister disdain into his words.

The commander nodded. “The queen’s brother, but why—”

Jaime pointed with Widow’s Wail to the street to his right. The man followed his gaze to the ruins of the Sept of Baelor. Then Jaime pointed up to Drogon. He could just see Daenerys on its back, but he couldn’t read her expression. “You remember the sept? That is nothing to what this dragon can do. That dragon will burn every last one of you.” He pointed back at the Unsullied forming up with their spears and shields. “If those men don’t run you through first. And believe me, they  _ really  _ want to.” 

He couldn’t see Jon or Brienne anymore, prayed to any god that would listen that they could make a big enough show of that bloody wildfire before Daenerys grew impatient. The dragon’s claws skittered on the roof, and chunks of tile broke loose and shattered on the street below.

Jaime raised his chin, looked slowly down their front line, meeting the gaze of boys far too young to be here as well as seasoned fighters. “By order of your commander, Ser Jaime Lannister, surrender now. Lay down your arms, bend the knee to the dragon queen, and live another day.”

Jaime pointed his sword at the commander. “This is the best offer you’ll get. The only offer.”

The commander’s eyes widened, but he wasn’t looking at Jaime. His eyes were on something behind Jaime, but Jaime didn’t dare look back. Instead he looked up at Daenerys. A smile curved her lips, but damn, he still couldn’t tell what that meant.

Heavy, booted steps approached, and then he was flanked. Jaime glanced quickly to each side. Jon to his left. Brienne to his right. And then they raised their swords. 

Green flame flickered down the length of both Valyrian blades, eerie in daylight. A chill swept over him. This was it.  


Brienne didn’t even look at him, her mouth still tight with strain, her eyes on the Lannister soldiers. In her most imperious voice, she said, “You heard your commander. Yield.”

Jon added his voice, a king’s voice, Jaime thought but would never say. “The reign of Cersei Lannister is over. Kneel before Daenerys Targaryen, first of her name, mother of dragons, breaker of chains, and queen of the seven kingdoms.”

Jaime could kiss the boy for that reminder to his queen, of who she proclaimed herself to be. Liberator. Mother. Not destroyer. Not her father. 

The commander dropped his sword, and even as it clattered to the cobbles, others did the same. Men started dropping to their knees, and he heard a cry go up within the ranks. “Ring the bells!” The cry grew, and traveled along the street, until he heard the smallfolk taking it up in the surrounding streets.

Daenerys looked away from the surrendered soldiers, toward the Red Keep on Aegon’s High Hill.

Nothing happened for so long that Jaime began to despair that it would. And then the bells began to toll in the closest tower, and across the city the other bells began to ring. 

Drogon’s claws bit into the tiles once again, its wings unfolded and Daenerys took off into the sky.  

 


	20. Chapter 20

The dragon climbed, great wings beating hard, Daenerys clinging to its back. 

Jaime held his breath. He’d lost track of Grey Worm. A dagger might be kinder than this waiting. Then it would be over, for him at least.

_ You’ll know when it’s over. _ The flaming sword. He’d never expected it would be Brienne, or Snow for that matter. When he’d thought of it at all, Jaime had assumed a flaming sword would kill him, the last time. 

“Come on, Dany,” Snow muttered. 

She flew low over the city as she always did, disappearing behind the crowded buildings. She would circle back in a moment and open fire.  

Daenerys rose higher in the sky, into their view, and turned toward the Red Keep. Without burning anything, or anyone. 

“Jaime.” Brienne grabbed his arm, and before he understood what she was doing, she’d rubbed her blade along his, smearing the burning wildfire along the length of Widow’s Wail. 

He shivered again. He’d had a dream, once, where they held flaming swords. It hadn’t ended well. 

“To the Red Keep!” Jon bellowed, and started forward. The Lannister soldiers scattered before the boy and his burning blade, leaving their swords in the street.

Ser Davos eyed the burning swords. “I didn’t think that was going to work,” he said with a chuckle.

Jaime shrugged, knowing they were talking about different things entirely. “Neither did I.” 

They hurried to catch up to Snow. Daenerys was well ahead of them, the dragon’s powerful wings carrying it inevitably toward the keep. Cersei would be watching, she would see her doom approaching. Jaime wondered if Arya and the Hound were watching, if they’d already made their moves. 

Northerners and Unsullied made their way up the avenue with minimal bloodshed, only the occasional soldier or drunken fool wielding a cudgel daring to stand in their way. The Dothraki scattered throughout the city to quell any further resistance. Jaime did not like to think of what they would do left to their own devices, but he could do nothing about that.

Twice more they came across garrisons of Lannister soldiers. By then the bells had fallen silent, but Jaime ordered their surrender and the men gave way with obvious relief. A burning sword made for a strong argument. So did a dragon. 

Grey Worm left Unsullied who spoke the Common Tongue with each garrison, as he had with the first men to surrender. It would not do to reach the Red Keep and find themselves flanked by men who’d only feigned surrender. Nor would it do to install Daenerys on the throne and find that her men had slaughtered Lannister troops because the men couldn’t understand each other.

They lost sight of the dragon several times, but heard no explosions, no screams. The city had gone silent, the sharp cadence of the Unsullieds’ boots on the cobbles the only sound as they approached the Red Keep. 

“I knew it couldn’t be that easy,” Brienne muttered as the heavily-fortified barbican came into view. The gates were closed, Lannister soldiers arrayed before the gate with shields raised. Jaime could still see that gate closing in front of him on one ill-fated morning long ago, while he waved his gold hand ineffectually in the air.

Daenerys soared overhead, but she wasn’t aiming for the gates. Drogon circled the high towers of the Red Keep, opened its mouth, and blasted fire at one of the central towers. The slate roof blew apart, flames pouring into the window. Part of the wall crumbled, falling into the interior of the keep. Below, people began screaming all around them. 

The Tower of the Hand. The tower where Jaime had met her far too many times, retreating from the battle. She’d never given it over to Qyburn, preferring to play at being Tywin. The map room would be filled with broken slates, chunks of rock. He’d died there once, too, with Arya. 

Brienne touched his arm, urging him on. Her eyes were filled with sympathy. 

Drogon hovered over the castle, weaving around the towers. Waiting. 

Jaime took the lead, his sword still burning, though it wouldn’t last much longer. Thoros always had to reignite his blade, but it looked good in the initial charge. That was the point, for the enemy to fear him.  

One of the soldiers stepped forward, lowering his shield. Jaime didn’t recognize him, but that might be a blessing, if it came to fighting. “You’re with  _ them _ ?” His gruff voice was filled with disgust. 

“No more blood need be spilled today. The city has surrendered. Step away from the gates,” Jaime said patiently. 

The man stepped forward, and raised his sword. “Traitor. Turncloak.” 

Gods, was there one idiot in every version of this battle? “Don’t be a bloody fool,” Jaime spat. “You’re done.”

“Even if you get past me, you’ll never get through the gates,” the soldier boasted. 

Jaime squinted up at the top of the gates. He nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. Or perhaps…” Usually that parapet would be bristling with archers, but Jaime saw none at all. “Clegane,” he called. 

The Hound’s head appeared over the top of the wall. “Kingslayer,” he called back. “Took you bloody long enough.” 

The soldier craned his neck to look, saw the Hound’s scarred face. His sword point dropped to the dirt.

“Open the gates,” Jaime called, then turned his attention to the soldier again. “Care to step aside now? Or would you rather be gutted by a crippled turncloak? I’m feeling generous today. Your choice.”

The soldier paled, and stumbled out of the way. His men parted as the gates opened, watching the invading army march past without any resistance at all. Cersei inspired little loyalty in her troops. She counted on the Lannister name, and Lannister gold. Both were in short supply these days. Add in an abandoned castle in the Westerlands, and the Lannisters looked like a poor bet. Even Jaime could see that. His father had been right. Those early months of the war, they could have established a dynasty to last a thousand years. Instead they’d died, one after another. 

Jaime glanced at his wife, her determined face betraying just a hint of nerves. After today, she might curse bearing his name. His child, too, that was a possibility he dare not think on too much. Not now. 

Behind the gates, the outer courtyard was filled with smallfolk. Some were weighed down with anything they’d been able to carry, valuables and gold and food. Fights would break out soon, if they hadn’t already. 

Cersei’s human shield. Children began screaming when they saw the army entering the courtyard, and the crowd moved back as one. But there was no room, nowhere to go. The sea of people moved restlessly. Children cried, women wept, and many of the men were armed. Most with knives, hammers, the tools of their trades. But there were hundreds of them, deeply afraid and dangerous if they decided to act. 

Jaime waited for Jon, Davos, Brienne, and Grey Worm to catch up to him. More Unsullied had peeled off from their ranks to watch the Lannister soldiers at the gates. 

“She means us to slaughter them,” Brienne said grimly. 

“Aye, she does,” Davos agreed. 

“We can form a shield wall, make a path,” Grey Worm suggested. 

“There’s no room,” Jaime countered grimly. 

Clegane joined them. “Fucking hells, I opened the gates, aren’t you coming in?” 

“There’ll be a riot if we go through that mess now,” Snow answered. “We’ll lose half our men.”

Clegane looked back over his shoulder. “City’s surrendered, eh?”

“Yes,” Brienne answered. 

Clegane turned back and stomped over to the gates. “Go home, you craven cunts. Battle’s over. This lot won’t stab your worthless hides if you don’t raise arms to them,” he bellowed, then looked back at them. He stood in the open gate, glaring at the crowd. 

Grey Worm gave a command in Valyrian, and the Unsullied parted to leave a path between them. The northerners shuffled awkwardly out of the way. 

“Go on now, do you want to fucking die today?” Clegane growled. As if to punctuate this speech, Drogon wheeled overhead again, low and menacing. Daenerys needed space to land.

One woman clutching a small child’s hand emerged from the crowd, bare feet and big eyes in a dirty face. She sidled past Clegane, who stepped aside and leaned against the open gate. The child, boy or girl was difficult to tell, had a filthy thumb stuck in its mouth and trailed behind its mother, looking up at them in awe as they passed by. 

A young man was next, ignoring the cries of “Craven,” that rose from the crowd. More women began to trickle past, some older people and children among them. Most of the men didn’t move, but within a minute or two enough had departed to give them space to move. 

Grey Worm gave another command, and Unsullied marched through the gate, forming two lines and turning away to form a shield wall on both sides. Jon stepped into the gap with Grey Worm, and Jaime followed, Brienne and Ser Davos bringing up the rear. Soldiers closed the gap behind them, moving inexorably toward the entrance to the throne room.  

“Start clearing the courtyard,” Jon commanded, and Davos fell back to take charge of their men. They would need the Unsullied inside to secure the throne and to find Cersei. 

Jaime was determined to be there when they found her. He couldn’t and wouldn’t help her flee, but he didn’t want her mistreated either.  

The throne room was dim, fires flickering in the massive braziers warming the space but failing to provide much light. Even so, Cersei was easy to see in her crimson gown, seated on the throne she loved so well. She watched them approach, flanked by Qyburn and the Mountain. He’d never met her here, today. This was all new.

Cersei’s eyes widened as she saw him. “Jaime.”

“Bronn passed on your token of affection, sister. Tyrion and I were touched,” he said with a cutting smile.

“You betrayed me,” she snapped. Cersei eyed him more closely, and Jaime was glad that Brienne had fallen back, standing closer to Jon than to him. “How dare you wear our lion on that armor. How dare you come here with  _ them_, for that dragon bitch.”

“I’ve made kings and unmade them, Cersei. Perhaps I’m itching to try it with queens.” Jaime let the threat hang them, knowing he couldn’t, wouldn’t pull his sister from that throne the way he had with Aerys. She wasn’t mad, just blindingly selfish, short-sighted and vindictive. 

Cersei’s snarl smoothed into the sweetly innocent expression he recognized as his sister playing weak, begging for his help. “Jaime, you couldn’t kill me anymore than you could kill yourself.” If only she knew, how many times he’d done that very thing. “You can’t let them kill me. You must protect us.” She touched her belly, just as flat as when he’d seen her last.

Jaime didn’t move. His voice shook less than he’d expected. “A useless cripple like me? I don’t suppose I’d be much protection, Cersei. I’d best stay where I am.”

Cersei’s eyes narrowed and flicked briefly toward Brienne. “With her?” She laughed, a brittle sound. “So the beast finally let you crawl between her legs and hide behind her skirts. Stay with her then. Die with her.” 

“The only one dying today, Your Grace, is you,” Qyburn said, turning to his queen with an obsequious little bow. He stepped away from the throne and made his way down the steps. “And him,” he added, pointing at the Mountain.

“You’d abandon me now? I  _ made  _ you.” Cersei was all outrage now. She was used to Jaime’s small betrayals, enough that this one was not entirely unexpected, but Qyburn had been her creature since the moment he set foot in King’s Landing all those years ago.

“You’ve been quite generous,” Qyburn agreed, facing the queen now. “But the time has come to pay for your sins.” He reached up and began to pull at his face. Cersei recoiled as the man’s skin began to tear away, his entire face and scalp coming off in one piece. 

Beneath lay the placid face and dark, flashing eyes of Arya Stark. “You took my father’s head on the steps of the Sept of Baelor while I watched from the crowd. I wanted to kill you myself, but I think I’ll enjoy this more.” 

For perhaps the first time in her life, Cersei was speechless. And afraid. Jaime found both deeply unsettling. But she buried the fear quickly. Fear was weakness, and there was nothing Cersei despised more.

“Surrender,” Jon said, his voice echoing in the vast throne room as Arya came to stand at his side. “Daenerys can be merciful.”

Cersei leaned forward, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Then she’s weak. I would fetch a lion from Casterly Rock. Starve it a few days. Fill the dragonpit with smallfolk to watch.”

His mind conjured Brienne, with a wooden sword, terrified and bloody but defiant. Jaime shuddered. “Cersei—”

“Where’s our brother?” she cut him off. “Didn’t that little monster want to watch me die? Perhaps kill me himself?  He always wanted to, you know. He was never so happy as when I was suffering.” 

“I’m here,” came a hoarse voice from behind them. Jaime turned and watched as Tyrion made his way slowly up the long hall and through the line of Unsullied. Grey Worm had brought only five men in with him to secure the throne, the rest outside waiting to escort their queen in from the courtyard. 

Tyrion held a paltry dagger, likely scavenged from the dead as he made his way through the city. He was supposed to stay outside the gates until the entire city was secured. But Tyrion listened to directions about as well as a small child when they didn’t suit him. He dropped the dagger to the floor, uncaring, as he walked up to stand with his brother. They’d be together then, in the end.

“Forgive my lateness,” Tyrion said with a mocking bow. “Your throne, sweet sister, is so very far from the city gates and my legs are so very short.” 

“What did you offer that fool Bronn to spare your lives?” she asked, for all the world looking as if she was enjoying herself now. 

“Highgarden,” Tyrion answered sourly.

Cersei laughed, a throaty sound that Jaime hadn’t heard in a long time. There had been so little joy in their lives since Joffrey’s death, Tywin’s. The mourning had never ended, though Cersei was garbed in rich crimson today, with a long gold chain holding a locket of Lannister gold with its lion rampant to match the steelwork in the window behind the throne. The seven-pointed star had hung there since the Targaryens’ reign, but Cersei had replaced it in her effort to legitimize her rule.

“A Lannister always pays his debts. He believed that, did he? He doesn’t know how little your promises are worth.” Her voice was mocking, cold. Cersei settled back against the throne, her hands clasped over her belly. There was no child, Jaime had to remember that now. Her choices were her own, her fate her own.

“I tried to save you, Cersei,” Tyrion began, frustration evident as he ran a hand over his beard.

“You tried to destroy us. You killed my son, my father, my daughter. I lost  _ everything. _ You will not take this too.” She turned her attention to the Mountain. “Kill them all.” 

Jaime’s blood ran cold as the Mountain lumbered forward. Tyrion stumbled back, behind the spears of the Unsullied.

“Me first, you fucker,” the Hound called out, storming past Jon and Arya to face his brother. “You deal with me first.” 

The Mountain stopped, turned toward the Hound, and nodded. 

Brienne backed away, and yanked Jaime by the arm to follow her. This was what Clegane had wanted. He’d complained bitterly about his assignment at the gates, so Jaime had promised he would get his chance with his brother. That was all Jaime could do. 

The Clegane brothers circled each other, and Sandor slashed at the Mountain’s unarmored leg. Gregor, whatever was left of him, slammed a mailed fist into the Hound’s jaw. Sandor rocked back, but recovered swiftly, slashing at his brother’s right arm this time.  

Brienne sidestepped closer to Jaime. “Can the Hound kill him?” she whispered, trying not to draw attention.

He’d never seen either Clegane brother after their meeting on the tower stairs, had no idea how that fight ended. “I don’t—” 

A fireball exploded behind the throne, shaking the entire room. Jaime hit the stone floor hard, bits of glass and stone all around him. He turned swiftly and found Brienne, dazed but seemingly unhurt, stone dust in her hair and smudged on her face. The others were scattered on the floor, and one of the Unsullied didn’t get back up. 

The throne room had cracked like a massive stone egg. The window behind the throne was gone, along with most of the wall and part of the vaulted ceiling, leaving a gaping hole. 

Cersei rose unsteadily to her feet, blood running down her cheek. Her crown lay on the steps. The Mountain had not moved. His helmet was gone, his mottled and decayed face exposed, his armor dented. A long blade of metal from the ironwork of the window protruded from his arm, but still he stood, massive greatsword in hand. As if it were no more than a splinter, he reached up and yanked out the metal, dripping with viscous black gore, and tossed it to the floor.

The Hound scrabbled away from him through the debris littering the floor.

Jon rose, pulling Arya up at his side, and Grey Worm called out a command, his men getting to their feet and aiming their spears at the Mountain.

The Hound got to his knees just as the Mountain grabbed him by the hair, yanking him up. Sandor lunged and buried his sword in the Mountain’s gut. Gregor shook his brother like a rag doll and tossed him away. He clasped the hilt of Sandor’s sword with his free hand and started trying to pull it free.

And then Drogon landed in the gaping hole behind the throne. It stalked into the room, around the throne, sniffing at Cersei before coming to a stop on the steps, its tail curled around the back of the throne. 

Jaime shivered. Daenerys wore no crown, but who could challenge her now, astride a dragon the like of which had not been seen in three hundred years? Even the Mountain turned to look at her. Daenerys’s eyes narrowed, and Jaime knew what she would do a moment before she did it.

“Retreat!” he bellowed, and dragged Brienne back. 

“Dracarys.”

Heat washed over them, fire lighting the room. 

For a moment he could see nothing, the fire too bright for his eyes. Then he saw Drogon, massive black head spewing flames across the throne room. A pillar on the far side blackened, stone cracking in the heat. The others watched too, barely out of reach of the flames. The Mountain was going up like a candle, his armor dripping, his skin sizzling. And someone screamed. At first Jaime thought it was Brienne, but when he looked, she was simply staring in mute horror.

The Mountain thrashed within the flames, his sword glowing a dull red as he swung wildly, nearly taking off the Hound’s head with one blow. He staggered into the Unsullied, who scattered, uncertain how to deal with this threat. One threw his spear, but it lodged in the Mountain’s leg without slowing him at all. A sword still protruded from his belly. 

Arya and Jon turned to face the Mountain, Arya producing a sword from under Qyburn’s robes. The Hound joined them. Only Grey Worm hung back, circling around to go to his queen. Jaime caught a glimpse of his brother, making his way toward the throne along the wall. 

Jon slashed at the Mountain again, and the burning man went down to the floor, great sword glowing a dull red in his hand.

When Drogon stopped, Cersei was sprawled on the throne, flames licking up her voluminous skirts. Her hands were red and blistered, and her dress was burned on the left side. No, Jaime’s stomach turned as he understood. Her entire left side was burnt, her sleeve entirely gone and the flesh beneath burnt and bloody. Her neck and cheek were blistered too, and she slapped ineffectually at the flames still licking up her skirts. 

Jaime got to his feet and staggered a few steps forward before Drogon’s head swung toward him, a warning.

“Your Grace,” Jaime called, sheathing his sword.

Daenerys didn’t seem to hear him. Maybe she didn’t want to. She was watching Cersei, watching the Mountain. Watching the fire she’d started. Cersei was weeping now, and no matter what she’d done, Jaime could not bear to watch this and do nothing.

“Here.” Brienne thrust her cloak into his arms. Yes, this would smother the flames.  

“My queen, please.” Tyrion’s voice rang out. He stood between Drogon and Jaime now. Damn fool, the dragon would eat him in a single bite and barely notice.

Jaime risked a few more steps forward, but Drogon was still blocking him. 

Daenerys slid from the beast’s back without acknowledging either Lannister brother, and Drogon moved to let her pass. Jaime slipped by as well, keeping his distance from the queen garbed all in black. Mourning all those she’d lost to get here. He pressed a hand to Tyrion’s shoulder as he passed him.  _ Stay here. _

Jaime scrambled up the steps, and Cersei finally saw him. Her mouth curled up in a smile on one side, her eyes swimming with pain but grateful to see him. Three times this Cersei had ordered his death, even moments ago, and yet she still took his attention, his devotion, as a given. 

Jaime tossed Brienne’s cloak over Cersei’s skirts, smothering the flames. She died. Every time. So did he. He should have expected it. And yet somehow, no matter how many times Jaime had told himself that Cersei could not be saved, he’d still hoped she could be. Somehow. Even though he knew that this moment, when the Stranger was closing in, was the only time she ever wanted him. Cersei never wanted to go alone. He understood that impulse, had allowed it to claim him too many times.

Up close, the odor of cooked flesh was strong, horribly familiar. He’d never forgotten that smell. Her left arm was charred, her ribs visible in the ruin of her dress. Her face, she would hate to see it, blistered and blackened on one side, untouched on the other. The girl he’d loved, and the monster she became. 

A choked sob escaped him. 

Her right hand touched his face. “Jaime,” she said softly, her mouth twisting in a grimace, her chest heaving with pained breaths. She would die. Slowly. In agony. 

He’d seen her die so many times. It shouldn’t hurt this much. “Cersei,” he answered.

“Nothing else matters,” she whispered, tears running down her cheek. 

“Only us.” He knew this script. He knew what to say, to ease her passing. And he knew what to do. 

Jaime gathered her up in his arms and knelt at the foot of the Iron Throne. She didn’t notice his hand reaching into his boot, only that he held her close, felt her rapid breaths hot on his cheek. Cool metal filled his palm. 

She tried to speak again, failed. He pressed his forehead to hers, and slid his dagger between her ribs. 

Cersei gasped, her gaze clearing for a moment as she looked at him. So close. Her eyes were so close. But there was no anger in her this time, not as there had been on the city gates.  Her eyes fluttered closed, and her hand dropped away from his shoulder. No more pain. No more hate. No more fear.

Jaime held her, crying, until he felt a hand on his shoulder. 

Tyrion. Grief in his eyes, but relief as well. Jaime felt that too. Felt unworthy for feeling it. 

Daenerys was waiting, with Grey Worm at her back, and the dragon restless in the confines of the throne room. 

“No!” Arya's voice, strangled, angry.

Chaos erupted to his left as the Mountain started to get up again. “Stop him,” Jon bellowed, and Arya raised her slim little sword. It looked tiny compared to the Mountain's bulk. He might not even notice if she pricked him. The Hound staggered up and shoved Arya away from his brother. Brienne hurried to join them. Somewhere along the way, her sword had stopped burning. His too, and Snow’s. That didn’t matter.  

The Mountain got no further than his knees, but still he slashed out blindly, cleaving the Hound’s arm from his body. The younger Clegane crumpled to the floor. Arya dropped to her knees beside him, and Brienne stood over them, protecting them. Jon stepped in behind the Mountain and slashed deep into the back of his neck. The Mountain toppled, still moving, still burning. 

Jon raised his sword over his head, and swung down with all his strength. Gregor Clegane’s head rolled away from his body, and the Mountain did not move again.

The remaining Unsullied moved to the foot of the steps, ready to protect their queen from the people who’d given her the thrice-damned throne, if need be. Brienne helped a teary Arya to her feet, and Jon moved away from the burning corpse. 

It was over. 

Jaime slowly got to his feet, Cersei still in his arms, wrapped in his wife’s cloak, with his dagger still in her chest. There was something obscene about that, but it was all he could do to stand, to stumble away from the throne and lay Cersei down on the stone floor, to pull the cloak over her wrecked face. 

Jon cleared his throat. “The throne is yours, Your Grace.”

Daenerys glanced back at him, then approached the throne. It was smeared with blood and soot, but she reached out with shaking fingers and touched it anyway. A small, triumphant smile lit her face. She turned and sat, at last, on the Iron Throne.

Tyrion moved to her side, Grey Worm on the other. The Unsullied knelt before her, and Jon, Arya, and Brienne followed suit. 

Jaime knew he should, but he couldn’t do it yet. Not with Cersei’s blood on his hand. Not with his wife watching him with such grief in her eyes. Not for his sister, but for him. 

Jaime was jerked back, an arm wrapped around his throat. 

“My queen, I have a gift for you.” The voice was familiar, deep and fervent. Mad. 

Pain lanced through Jaime’s side. This too was familiar. He couldn’t even cry out, not with the arm squeezing his throat. And then it released him, and he crumpled in front of Cersei’s body. 

The man kicked Jaime as he stepped over him, blood dripping from his sword. Euron Greyjoy. Grinning, not sparing a glance for the queen he’d championed as he set his sights on a new one like the bastard he was. 

And then Brienne raised her sword and charged at him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a favor to ask. Comments brighten my day, but comments that mention something other than the cliffhanger ending fill my tired, show-jaded soul. So if you can spare a few moments to let me know anything in this chapter that tickled your fancy, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments on the last chapter. I will answer them, but I wanted to acknowledge them here as well. And now let's see how that cliffhanger resolves, shall we?

The vast map of the seven kingdoms was weighted with goblets and chunks of stone. Tokens of various colors and shapes were scattered across it, scraps of parchment and quills littering the surface of the small council table. 

Ser Bronn’s leathery face was flushed as his fist slammed down on the table. The tokens bounced across the map. “Those cunts promised me Highgarden.”

If he expected his display of temper to cow the queen, he would be disappointed. Those who saw only a petite, beautiful woman, white-blonde hair elaborately styled beneath a circlet of silver dragons, missed the fire within her. Tales of the dragon queen had spread quickly through the city, no doubt at her command. The bards sang of her dragons fighting at Winterfell, and told fantastic tales of her walking through fire unburnt and crucifying slavers by the hundreds. She understood the power of a good story.

Queen Daenerys’s expression didn’t change as Bronn straightened and fixed his indignant gaze on her, but her voice sharpened. “Did you see Lannister banners when you entered this keep? It wasn’t theirs to give. The Twins is more than generous.”

Daenerys clearly did not relish this part of statecraft, the tedium of rewarding allies and paying debts when the crown had no coin to spare. For all the time she spent conquering the cities of Slaver’s Bay, Daenerys had little wealth of her own. She’d turned it all into ships, and weaponry, and fighting men. What she had in abundance were empty castles and fallow fields, the men who’d tended both taken by war.

“It’s not Highgarden,” Bronn grumbled, eyeing each face around the table with contempt. As if a sellsword’s disdain would trouble Lady Sansa, Lord Royce, or Prince Jon. Only Lord Edmure flinched from Bronn’s glare, as well he might, with only a day’s ride between Riverrun and the Twins. Lord Gendry wasn’t even listening closely, too busy carving new tokens from scraps of wood. 

Tyrion would not look the man in the eye. “The Twins comes with ready income from the crossing without the bother of smallfolk and villages to govern,” he pointed out, his face strained. 

“Don’t pretend you’re doing me any favors, little man. You still owe me,” Bronn snapped, stalking out of the room.

It had been like this for days, minor lords and landed knights descending like locusts to demand rights to castles or larger holdings. Through it all, Brienne stood silent vigil, armored, sword at the ready. They’d all sacrificed far too much to see this peace fall apart before the ravens had finished spreading the word of who now ruled in King’s Landing. 

“You might have warned me of that,” Queen Daenerys muttered to her Hand. “Highgarden. As if I’d raise a sellsword to Lord Paramount of the Reach.” She sounded affronted by the very idea. 

“Forgive me, Your Grace. You left Daario Naharis as regent of Meereen, did you not?” Tyrion was needling her purposefully, that was obvious. To what end, Brienne could not say, but she wished he would stop. 

“Daario Naharis pledged his company and fought by my side. Ser Bronn did not,” she answered coldly.

“My mistake, then. My brother agreed with you, as it happens,” Tyrion said irritably. “But as Bronn was pointing a crossbow at my face at the time, I found it expedient to agree with  _him_.”

Before Tyrion could goad his queen into feeding him to Drogon, Lady Sansa gestured to the page at the door to let the next claimant in. 

A young Dornishwoman entered the council chamber, her lush figure swathed in sandsilks. She was deferential in her address, but she spoke as one monarch to another, not a liege lady to her queen.  

“We’d been led to believe Ser Gerold Dayne ruled Dorne,” Lady Sansa said once the introductions were complete. 

Princess Arianne Martell, a cousin of the old ruling Martells, smiled slyly. “The Darkstar’s plans to attack King’s Landing made him rather popular with Cersei Lannister on the throne. When she fell, and his plans did not change, the ruling families of Dorne felt a change in our leadership was necessary as well.”

A touch on her arm startled Brienne. The reluctant Lord of Horn Hill, his round face filled with concern, stood at her side. “You should rest, ser. This is the last petitioner of the day.”

Brienne wanted to protest, but she’d scarcely slept in the last fortnight, and her eyes were dry and gritty, her limbs heavy. Even if the Dornishwoman pulled a dagger right now, Brienne wasn’t sure how swiftly she could draw Oathkeeper. 

“I’ll do that, Sam,” she acquiesced. “Thank you.” 

She caught Podrick’s eye across the room, and he nodded briefly. He would stay with Lady Sansa and accompany her as she moved about the castle. He’d filled that role ably in her absence. He should be knighted. She would do it, if he wanted, soon. He could have the full experience, the night’s vigil in the castle sept along with the formal ceremony.

Brienne slipped out of the small council chambers and made her way through the outer yard, where the smallfolk had crowded on the morning of the last battle. Work had already begun on repairs to the throne room and Tower of the Hand, as well as the Gate of the Gods on the far side of the city. 

Brienne hadn’t been inside the throne room since that day. She could only remember the bodies littering the floor when the queen took her throne, and the blood staining the stones. When her father’s ship arrived, she would have to go with him, to bend the knee and pledge Tarth to the Iron Throne. She’d been spared that duty thus far only because his ship had been delayed by winter storms. 

In the smaller inner courtyard, Brienne saw Bran Stark leaving the godswood, his chair pushed by one of the northern guards she’d trained. Brienne stopped and waited for them. 

The delegation from Winterfell had arrived far sooner than expected, drawn south at Bran Stark’s urging not long after Brienne and Jaime had left the North. Their arrival had confirmed what Brienne already suspected, that there was no going back from this point, no trying again for a more favorable outcome. For good or ill, Queen Daenerys sat the throne, with Jon Snow as her reluctant heir, Prince of Dragonstone and Warden of the North. 

“Lord Bran,” she said with a shallow bow when they drew close. 

“Ser Brienne,” the eerie young man acknowledged. 

“Wyllis, I’ll take Lord Bran from here,” she said impulsively, and the boy bowed and took his leave without protest. 

“I thought you might wish to speak to me,” Bran said.

In truth, Brienne had been avoiding him. At first because she was angry, and then because she feared what he might say. Bran had moved all of them like pieces on a cyvasse board, and she did not believe the survival of the capital was his only goal. 

Brienne moved behind the chair, where it was easier to forget the oddly vacant expression Bran wore much of the time. “Where were you going?”

“The library,” he said, and then answered her unspoken question, “It’s quiet and warm.” Of course, the Three-Eyed Raven need not study dusty tomes to learn about the world and its past.

Brienne pushed him along the snow-dusted stones, uncertain whether she dared ask the one question she truly needed answered.

“Why Jaime?”  

Bran’s head tilted to the side, as if considering the question. He was quiet longer than she expected, until they were nearly at the library doors. “I watched him kill Aerys. I watched him at Winterfell. He hated breaking his vow, but he did it. I knew he could reach the right people, and would do what needed to be done, no matter the cost.”

“So you used him.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. He’d died so many times for this, for Bran, without truly knowing why. 

“We’re all tools in service of something greater. The only difference is that he knew his purpose.”

“What happens now?” The peace was still fragile, and Daenerys’s pronouncement that this had been the Last War seemed hopelessly naive. She said she’d come to break the wheel, but those it served were not keen to relinquish their power. Brienne feared that blood would be spilled, and soon, in defense of the new regime.

“I don’t know,” he answered, with an odd sense of wonder in his voice, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. 

Opening the library door and pushing Bran through proved somewhat awkward, but it distracted from the questions buzzing in her mind. Questions that were likely best left unasked. Why had Bran had chosen to change the war’s outcome? Perhaps Jon had died in the battle, or Arya. Possibly both. Or perhaps Daenerys’s death had plunged the realm into war again. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

The library was massive, many times larger than the library at Winterfell, but dim and musty. Dust lay thick upon the shelves. Clearly the Baratheons had not made much use of the library. At Evenfall, Brienne had passed many a pleasant afternoon reading stories from the Age of Heroes, of Bran the Builder and Ser Galladon of Morne, of Durran Godsgrief and Symeon Star-eyes. A wave of longing for home struck her, harder than it had in many years. She pushed it aside, ignored the memory of the girl who loved the mingled scents of parchment, dust, leather, and glue. 

At one end of the library was a large open area with a few moldering chairs. Brienne pushed a chair aside and maneuvered Bran close enough to feel the fire’s warmth but not close enough to risk a spark catching on his furs. Now that she’d brought him here, Brienne didn’t quite know what to do. Bran could move himself short distances and was often left alone at Winterfell, but he wasn’t familiar with the Red Keep. Brienne only knew it from her time here years ago, watching Lady Sansa from afar. If only she’d found the courage to talk to the girl back then, she could have saved Lady Catelyn’s daughter so much pain.

“You should go. You will need your rest,” Bran said, his voice flat again. 

“I thought you didn’t know what was coming?” 

“I have seen every great summit in the history of Westeros. Change does not come easily,” he answered.

“As you say.” Brienne bowed and took her leave, grateful to breathe cool, fresh air as she entered the courtyard again. Thoughts of home were a distraction she could ill afford right now. She wasn’t even sure it was truly her home anymore, she had been so long away. Perhaps she had spent too long traveling to settle in one place again. 

Her steps echoed as she walked through the empty courtyard. On the day of the battle, Daenerys had addressed her people here, Unsullied, Dothraki, and Westerosi alike. Soldiers and smallfolk together, though Brienne had heard she spoke in Valyrian more than the Common Tongue. She hadn’t been there to see it. 

Brienne’s steps slowed as she passed the castle’s sept. A few of the windows were damaged, the roof would need repair, but the interior was otherwise intact. On impulse she went inside, walking up the aisle toward the great glass seven-pointed star casting a golden glow across the floor. Candles burned at all the altars. 

Brienne had stood on this very spot this morning while Lady Sansa lit a candle to the Crone, seeking her wisdom. She kept the old gods, but honored her mother’s gods as well. Brienne lit a candle and offered a brief prayer. This morning she’d sought the Warrior’s strength, now the Mother’s mercy and protection. 

While she prayed, Arya slipped into the sept, silent as ever. She lit a candle to the Stranger and slipped away again. She spent much of her time among the injured in the care of the maesters, rather than join the intrigues in the small council chamber. Brienne suspected Arya was avoiding her. Their last encounter had ended poorly, with raised voices and hurt feelings on both sides.

When her knees began to ache, Brienne rose from the altar. Her chambers, and her bed, awaited. Sleep was not easily found of late, her dreams twisted and cruel and bloody when she could sleep at all. 

The Maidenvault, for all its strange history, was simply a long keep with many chambers. Along with the injured, it also housed the queen’s high-ranking guests and their retainers. Lady Sansa’s chambers were two doors down from Brienne’s, with Podrick between them. She closed the door gently behind her when she entered her chambers, careful not to let the heavy door slam. Podrick often forgot, and the sound echoed down the length of the keep. 

With deft fingers, she removed Oathkeeper’s belt and hung it on a peg on the wall with Widow’s Wail. Her fingertips traced the hilt, where his hand had held it while they fought side by side. A horrible name for a sword, unworthy of the man who’d wielded it against the army of the dead. 

The room was too warm, the chill of King’s Landing nothing to the bone-deep cold of the North. A medicinal sharpness hung in the air. One of the pots of salve on the table had been left open. The maids and maesters did not like visiting this room, and escaped as quickly as they were able. 

“Were you roaring your displeasure again?” she asked.

“If you let me out of my cage, I wouldn’t have to roar,” Jaime answered petulantly, wincing as he shifted against the pillows. 

“You’ll tear open your wound again, and most likely bring back your fever.” She tried to sound stern, but concern crept in without her consent. 

She turned away so he wouldn’t see any of that in her face, and started to remove her armor. The routine was soothing, her fingers moving without conscious thought, but her gaze kept snagging on the newly-stitched rent in her sleeve. It matched the neat stitches on her arm from her fight with Euron Greyjoy.

Nothing had been harder than leaving Jaime lying on the throne room floor, bleeding and broken beside the body of his dead twin. Nothing had been easier than pulling his blade from its scabbard and facing Euron with both halves of Ice in her hands. He’d backed away as she approached, eyes darting everywhere as if there was anywhere he could run where she would not follow. 

She hadn’t seen the Unsullied rush to protect the queen, hadn’t heard Jon demand that Greyjoy lay down his sword and surrender. She learned all of that later, when her blood no longer sang of vengeance. She’d seen only Euron, dripping wet, his wild eyes and bared teeth, his sword red with Jaime’s blood. 

The last time she’d carried two swords, Jaime had stolen one and fought her, his hands still in chains. These swords were better matched, perfectly balanced and alive in her hands. And yet she’d been keenly aware of Jaime’s absence from her side.

“Not so pretty as his last woman, are you?” Euron had spat, laughing. He’d slashed at her, nothing of chivalry and fair play in his tactics. Every strike had been meant to cripple her, to bring her down for the killing blow. 

“Valyrian steel is pretty enough,” Brienne had countered, and slashed across his thigh. Widow’s Wail drank his blood eagerly.

Euron had countered with a thrust she barely deflected, his blade opening a long shallow cut in her left arm. Blood had spattered the floor as they advanced, circled, and Arya had tried to sneak behind him. Or at least she’d appeared to. Looking back on it later, Brienne knew that Arya could have killed him easily, before he even knew she was there. Euron had turned his head to track her movement, and that was all the opening Brienne needed. She’d stabbed both blades into his gut, lunging to follow as he fell to the floor. 

His sword had dropped from his hand, his eyes wide. Euron’s manic laugh had echoed through the throne room, blood spraying from his lips. “You think you’ve won? You’re all dead,” he’d sputtered, a horrible rictus grin on his face. 

“No, you are.” Standing over him, Brienne had pulled her blades apart, slowly, spilling his guts into his lap. She had turned her back before he stopped breathing.

Brienne set the last of her armor on its stand. Podrick would fuss over it later, but she was grateful to have its weight removed from her shoulders. She turned back to her husband, lying in their bed. 

Brienne could still see the blood smeared all over Jaime’s boiled leather, slippery on her hands as she’d dropped to his side and pulled him into her arms on the throne room floor. She’d screamed for help, she remembered that, and Tyrion had come to her, his face ashen. 

Days had passed, slowly and all too fast, as Jaime bled, and sickened, and lingered delirious with fever. Brienne had remained at his side, Tyrion and Sam drifting in and out of the room. When a maester told Brienne that Jaime would not live through the night, Arya had come and offered to ease his dying, as she had done many times in the House of Black and White in Braavos. Brienne had screamed at her to get out and never come near Jaime again. She’d spent the night on her knees by the side of their bed, clasping Jaime’s hand, praying to any god who would hear her pleas.

By her will or that of the gods, Jaime had lived. The stench of death, poorly masked by the fragrant herbs the maids tossed into their fire, began to fade before Brienne had truly noticed it. She remembered all too well the corruption of Jaime’s hand rotting between them as they rode lashed together through the Riverlands. 

Lady Sansa had visited as often as she could after her arrival, forcing Brienne to attend to her own body’s needs while Sansa sat with Jaime. Brienne ate and washed and rested as little as possible without incurring her lady’s wrath. Seven days had passed before his fever broke, another day before Jaime had woken, annoyed to be coddled like a child but still too weak to protest much. 

He still couldn’t really move around, despite growing stronger every day. He tired just getting up to use the chamberpot, an indignity he bore with little grace. Nearly dying had not changed his proud, prickly nature, but the years he’d lived since the Battle of Winterfell had changed him in other ways. Or perhaps she had simply never been there before to witness his gift for command, his mind for strategy, his bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. All this in a man who had once thought himself worth only to serve his sister’s interests. 

“What did they call you today?” Jaime asked. He looked better today, his color improved and his eyes less glassy. He’d been refusing milk of the poppy.

Brienne snorted. “Ser Brienne of Tarth. I don’t know why they bother, it’s not as if they announce the Unsullied.” The pages in the small council chamber insisted on announcing everyone as they entered. Grey Worm had glared the boys into silence the first time they tried to pronounce  _ Torgo Nudho,  _ and they hadn’t attempted it again. The process was tedious, and since titles were conferred every day in this new regime, the pages couldn’t keep it all straight. Brienne had also been Lady Brienne Lannister, Lady Brienne of Tarth, and once Ser Lady Brienne Lannister of Tarth. The Lannister name seemed to appear and disappear as Tyrion’s favor with his queen grew and waned. 

“The Unsullied aren’t titled nobility in their own right,” Jaime reminded her. “You can hide behind Lady Stark all you like, you are heir to Tarth.”

Lady Sansa had requested her presence in that room, so Brienne went even though it meant leaving Jaime for much of the day. It made her uneasy, leaving him vulnerable and undefended surrounded by the queen’s men. “She hasn’t forgotten you’re here.” 

Jaime smirked, setting aside the White Book in his lap. He’d been flipping through it over the past few days. “Lady Stark? My apologies for not showing her the proper courtesies last time she visited, but I was rather busy dying.” 

That was not strictly true. Jaime had been in the midst of an argument with the tyrant of a septa trying to bathe him when Lady Sansa last came to their chambers. Brienne rather thought it was the sight of Jaime’s pale bare arse that drove Sansa from the room, her cheeks stained red, rather than his surly attitude.

“The queen, Jaime. Please don’t jest about this. She looks at me sometimes, and I know she is thinking of you.” Queen Daenerys had moments of warmth, more as the days passed without rebellion or bloodshed, but that warmth faded when she looked at Brienne.

He was quiet for a long moment, the humor gone from his eyes. “You might remind her I can scarcely wipe my own arse just now. If she fancies executing me for kingslaying, queenslaying, or treason, she’ll have to wait if she wants the smallfolk to see a proud lion. Otherwise they’ll have to drag me to the throne room or the dragon pit.” 

“They’ll have to get through me,” she muttered.

“No, they will not,” he snapped, fear in his eyes, not anger. “Don’t you dare, Brienne. You will not fight my arrest. You will not champion me. You will not bloody die for me.”

She started to protest and Jaime held out his lone hand to stop her. “Bad enough you’re the Kingslayer’s wife. If the dragon makes you a widow, you will go meekly back to Tarth and pray she forgets you ever existed.” Jaime’s voice was as commanding as a man stuck in bed in naught but a tunic could manage. 

“Meekly,” she echoed in disbelief. He could not possibly ask this of her. 

Jaime sighed. “Perhaps not meekly. I know it’s not in you to run from a fight, love, but some fights cannot be won.”

Brienne pulled off her boots and climbed into bed beside her husband. She wouldn’t argue with him, not now, but she would not let anyone take him from her again. No matter the odds, she had no choice but to fight.

 


	22. Chapter 22

“Are you hiding from the council meeting, or my wife?” Jaime sipped the mead Arya brought, sweet and heady and making him feel entirely too relaxed. 

Arya huffed in irritation. “Did you never think maybe I prefer your company?”

Jaime laughed, the sound catching and stalling in his throat as pain shot through his side. “No, little wolf, I did not.” He breathed through the pain, waited for it to dull again. “I’ve been meaning to ask, does it get easier? Living with all these deaths in your head?”

She shook her head. “Not really. They’re just there. Like a lost tooth. I don’t notice them so much anymore.”

Jaime set his cup down and stretched his feet toward the fire. It was good to be sitting up, to be dressed. He’d only been well enough to do so since yesterday, and the maesters clucking over him thought it was ill-advised. Clearly they didn’t realize that described nearly everything Jaime did. “Brienne will get over this, you know.”

Arya shrugged. “I only offered to ease the way, same as I offered others.”

Jaime watched her carefully. She was fidgeting. “Clegane?” 

“I owed it to him,” she said quietly, her eyes on the fire, lost in memory. She shook herself a little, took a long draught of mead and looked at Jaime again. “Sandor is at rest. More than I can say for the rest of us.” 

Jaime had heard that the Hound survived long enough to be moved from the throne room to the Maidenvault with the other injured. A caravan had left the previous day, taking most of the injured men to the Quiet Isle to finish their healing.

“Some will wear their scars on the outside,” Jaime said softly, remembering a night at Winterfell when he’d made a point to kiss every scar on Brienne’s body. “Some get to hide them inside and pretend nothing can touch them.” They had taken the city without a firestorm, without thousands of dead littering the streets, but the wars had scarred everyone. Orphaned children, broken men, women who might cringe from a man’s touch for the rest of their lives. Daenerys called herself the mother of dragons. He hoped she might find a way to mother her people as well.

Arya herself looked in need of healing, though she’d taken no wounds in the battle. She no longer remembered the secrets she’d shared with him, her days as his father’s cupbearer, arriving at the Twins just in time to witness her brother’s body defiled, the brutal murder of Meryn Trant and her frantic flight from Braavos. Whatever the Faceless Men had taught her, Arya Stark wasn’t just a weapon. She was not merely castle-forged steel, she’d been spell-forged and hammered over and over until she could kill even Death himself. Valyrian steel in her spine and her soul. And yet something of the child she’d been survived.  

“What will you do? After all this is settled and Brienne stops hovering over Sansa like a mother hen?” Arya asked, changing the subject. She was adept at turning the conversation away from her own well-being, away from her blacksmith lord. 

“What makes you think there’s an after?” Jaime offered her a wry smile. He’d thought of those words often during his many trips south, and now in the days he had never expected to live. The boy had not sought him out since arriving in King’s Landing. Jaime had been useful, and now he was not. It was the way of things.

He was grateful for Arya’s company. He couldn’t be this honest with Brienne. She still thought she’d saved him. Jaime wasn’t stupid. He knew the reckoning was coming. He’d killed a second monarch, in front of witnesses this time, and ruined the new queen’s plans for a spectacle to demonstrate her power.

Arya’s face was like a thundercloud. She’d never admit to liking him, but she did, he thought, or at least she understood him in a way no one else ever would. “You think Daenerys still means to kill you? Why not send her man in when you were dying, or lace your salves with poison?”  

“Not public enough. She didn’t get to break Cersei, not the way she wanted to.” Neither nobles nor smallfolk would’ve easily forgotten watching the old queen consumed by dragon fire. Instead Cersei had been laid out in the royal sept in the gown she’d died in, no effort made to conceal her wounds. For three days, her former subjects walked past, gawking at her, until the stench of decay was too strong even for the guards. 

Or so he’d been told. Jaime remembered almost nothing of those days, and in truth he was glad to have been spared that sight. Myrcella’s body had not weathered the journey from Dorne well, either, and he would never forget watching helplessly as his child bled, and died, and started to putrify before his eyes. 

“You could run,” she suggested. 

“She would never stop looking.” Would Arya still be here, telling him to escape the queen’s justice, if she knew what he’d done to Bran? He’d never felt right about keeping that secret, but Bran hadn’t shared it with his siblings. He had to believe there was a reason for that. 

“Did we make a mistake, putting her on the throne?” Arya asked, her gaze grown flinty. She had killed Daenerys twice before, and knew it. She wouldn’t balk at a third time. 

“The walls have ears. Best not to question that here.” Jaime hesitated. “We trusted your brother. Do you trust him still?”

Arya finished her mead and set it down before answering. “The boy I knew never would have used us the way he did. But we’re all so changed. Father always said, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. I have to trust my pack.”

Lions had no pack. Lions formed a pride. How fitting, Jaime had always thought. But his pride, once feared for their wealth and might, had dwindled to one crippled knight and one clever dwarf, neither particularly proud of their name. 

Jaime watched the fire, and drank, and they sat in companionable silence until his eyes drifted shut again. When he woke sometime later, Arya was gone.

 

* * *

 

When the knock finally came, Jaime knew who would be behind the door. 

Arya and Podrick were with Lady Sansa, Tyrion, and Prince Jon, wheedling coin from the lords still seeking to curry favor with the queen. Brienne was down at the docks with Ser Davos. She awaited the arrival of her father’s ship, while he spoke with ship captains traveling to Essos, in search of several who might bring back loads of grain from Pentos. 

Jaime was seated by the fire, a dagger tucked between the cushions on his left side. It would be of little use against a spear, but wielding Widow’s Wail was still beyond his strength. He almost wished he was naked or still in one of Brienne’s tunics, just to discomfit whoever she’d sent for him, if only for a moment. But no, he was dressed down to the boots, lacking only a cloak and his swordbelt. He suspected he would be allowed neither.

The door opened, an Unsullied soldier taking a position on either side. Grey Worm stood in the doorway. “Come,” he said briskly, eyeing Jaime with his usual steely gaze of a man. If his expression was a touch less hostile than before the battle, Jaime couldn’t be sure. He wouldn’t bet his life on it.

Jaime eased himself out of his chair, regretfully leaving the dagger behind. At best he might wound one of the Unsullied and irritate them enough to prolong his death. His side still pulled and ached, the muscles slowly knitting themselves slowly back together. The sword had glanced off his ribs, spilling his blood but hitting nothing vital. Euron hadn’t even done that right. 

“Where would Her Grace like me? The Dragonpit? King’s Square?” Jaime asked, striving for an insolent tone and failing. Grey Worm didn’t even understand the jest. He didn’t remember killing Jaime in the square at least twice. The days were beginning to blend together in Jaime’s mind.

Grey Worm glanced at him as they left the chamber. Two Unsullied fell in behind them, the two from the doorway taking the lead. “The throne room.”

Jaime laughed harshly, despite the pain. “Of course. I should have guessed.”

The throne room had been familiar to Jaime since he was a child brought to visit his father, Hand of the King. He remembered the dragon skulls, and the ever-present fires in the braziers, and the light filtering in through the seven-pointed star. He remembered, too, the hunting tapestries and stag’s antlers mounted everywhere in Robert’s reign. Cersei had torn down the star of the Faith and replaced it with her own lion rampant. But always, in every reign, the cavernous space was dark, shadows flickering along the walls, the light from the main window shining directly on the Iron Throne and its occupant. 

Now, in the aftermath of Drogon’s attack, the space was utterly transformed. 

Light streamed through the broken wall, illuminating the patterns in the old marble floors. Centuries of smoke blackened the pillars that held up the vaulted ceiling. And at the far end, the steps ascending to the throne were recently scrubbed clean of blood and soot. Targaryen banners hung from the walls, some rather moth-eaten, scavenged from the lower levels of the castle.

The Iron Throne gleamed dully in the sun. Behind it, scaffolds had been erected and new stones were being laid. A riot of colors dappled the floor, shining from the stained-glass window that had been inlaid into the new stonework to the left of the throne. Aegon and his sisters conquering Westeros astride their dragons. It was truly exquisite work, the best he’d ever seen. 

But all Jaime would ever see when he looked at that throne were the king and queen who’d died there: Aerys, dying messily on the floor, and Cersei, burned and still clinging to the damned thing like it would save her from her own folly.

Daenerys wasn’t sitting on the throne. She stood to one side, hands folded, regarding the reconstruction. She was alone but for one Dothraki bloodrider, the workers sent away to give the queen her privacy. She looked over her shoulder, and her platinum hair cascaded down her back. “A gift from the magisters of Myr. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Jaime reached the foot of the steps and stopped. “It is.” His guards melted into the shadows, only Grey Worm remaining. He ascended the steps and took his place to one side of the throne. 

Daenerys raised a hand to gesture into the breach where the blue sky intruded on the dimness of the throne room. Her sleeve fell back, black slashed with red. Gone was the leather armor of war. Her gown was styled in the Essosi fashion, draping softly around her petite form, and her crown was understated. Why shout her queenship when her dragon did that for her? To those old enough to remember, she looked every inch the Targaryen as well, Rhaenys rather than Rhaegar, but the eyes and the hair and the bearing were all there. 

“There will be a second window,” she said, “depicting the Battle of Winterfell. All of Westeros united against the dead.”

Jaime could see it, the legend she was spinning about herself, a cloak of tales to transform her from conqueror to wise and benevolent ruler. To make the people love her. This stank of his brother’s work, using words to re-shape the world as he wished it to be. “A pretty fiction. I don’t recall any Dornishmen in our ranks. Nor any Lannisters save Tyrion and myself.” 

“Your sister answered for her crimes. The Dornish gave me the bodies of an invalid and a child when I asked for fighting men.”

“I trust you found Ellaria Sand in the black cells.” He couldn’t remember telling anyone about her, possibly back at the Inn at the Crossroads, but he should have said something when they entered the city. The woman had murdered his child, but no one deserved to starve to death alone in the dark. 

“We did. I sent her back to Sunspear with Arianne Martell.” Her expression softened. “It might have been kinder to kill her.”

“Kinder, perhaps, but impolitic.” Lannisters always paid their debts, but the Dornish never forgot a grievance. Oberyn Martell had waited nearly twenty years to avenge Elia. 

She laughed. “Impolitic? Should I have made you my Hand instead of your brother, Kingslayer?”

If anyone had a right to use that name, it was her, but it still rankled. “I didn’t want it when my son was king and I certainly don’t want it now,” Jaime said flatly. She wasn’t serious, she was playing with him, like a cat batting about a mouse before devouring it. He’d almost forgotten, for a moment, how much this girl hated him. “You know what the Dornish want, what they feel they are owed after Elia. Wed an Yronwood or Santigar, not the Dayne boy, he’d be a nightmare. Give the realm an heir.”

“I have an heir,” she said imperiously, but there was something else in her eyes, an old wound still tender. Dimly he recalled that the girl had once been with child. The news had sent Robert into a towering fury. 

And now she had made Lyanna Stark’s son Prince of Dragonstone, her heir. “Yes, Jon Snow. Or is it Targaryen? I heard you legitimized him, as if he needed it. I take it he won’t wed you.”

Her cheeks flushed, and her voice was clipped. “No.” 

Jaime nodded. This, at least, he understood well. The mix of hurt and frustration and rejection from someone bound by blood to love you. “Cersei wouldn’t marry me, either, no matter how often I asked. Begged, even. I think she liked that best.”

“I never asked—” Daenerys stopped herself, took a deep breath and walked in her slow, purposeful way to sit upon the Iron Throne. Her gown would be covered in tiny rips. Cersei had always worn heavy, durable fabrics to sit the throne for that very reason. “We are not the same, you and I.”

“No, we are not,” Jaime agreed. 

“You are a problem, Jaime Lannister.” She sounded deeply annoyed by that, which didn’t improve his chances of survival, but it did amuse him.

“Easily solved, I’d imagine.” He tried to sound nonchalant and failed. Resignation wasn’t nearly so cutting. 

“Your lady wife is a problem.” 

Jaime blanched. His chest felt tight. Somehow he hadn’t actually expected her to hurt Brienne. He’d been a fool. Punishing Brienne would hurt both Jaime and Sansa Stark. “Send her home with her father. I will do whatever you ask if you grant me that small mercy.” 

She said nothing for so long that Jaime dropped slowly to his knees. “I will beg if I must.” 

Daenerys stood, sun streaming through her hair. She looked radiant. An avenging angel. “Where did you do it?” 

The change of subject was so abrupt he didn’t immediately understand what she meant. And then he did.

Jaime rose unsteadily to his feet and looked her in the eye. “I killed Rossart, the pyromancer, first. When I came back to the throne room, Aerys was sitting on the throne. He was still muttering, ‘Burn them all.’ I raised my sword here.” It was still dripping with Rossart’s blood. He hadn’t bothered to sheathe it, since he’d killed the man just outside. 

She said nothing, so he slowly ascended the first flight of steps. “He stood and called for guards, but none came. They were all defending the keep from my father’s men.” 

Jaime ascended two more steps, bringing him one step below the throne. “He turned to flee, and I ran him through.” 

“An unarmed man. No match for you.” Her voice quaked.

Jaime shook his head and moved the few steps to where Aerys fell. He turned his back on the queen, as Aerys had turned his back on him. The Mad King had forgotten the first rule of combat. Never turn your back on an enemy, and by then, Jaime’s vows had worn paper-thin, easily broken. “I tried to reason with him. I did. But a man who thinks he can burn a city and rise from the ashes as a dragon? He was beyond reason.”

The sharp point of a blade between his shoulder blades was no surprise. A drop of blood ran down his spine beneath his shirt. Jaime glanced around without looking behind him. Grey Worm had not moved, and he could still see her bloodrider’s shadow. 

“After you stabbed him? What did you do then?” Daenerys was calm, now that she held his life in her own two hands. He understood the power of that. 

Jaime swallowed hard, and thanked any god who might be listening that Brienne was safely out of the castle. Lord Selwyn would convince her to leave the city as swiftly as they could, and never come back.  

He sank slowly to his knees again, allowing her to follow the movement with her blade. Another drop of blood rolled down his spine, a third chasing it. “He fell, choking, spitting blood. I pulled his head back, and slit his throat. There was so much blood… By the time Ned Stark found us, it had run down all the steps.” He could still see it, and smell that thick coppery tang in the air. 

She grasped Jaime’s hair and yanked his head back, fingernails digging into his scalp. The dagger came up to his throat, teasing his skin just below his beard. He could see her small pale hand on the hilt, and the glint of the blade, and the sun shining down on them both. So very different from the dark night when he’d killed her father.

Daenerys was so close her breath ruffled his hair. Her grip on the dagger was firm as she pressed it in just enough to draw blood. Blood welled beneath the blade and dripped slowly down his throat, pooling in the dip of his collarbone. “I am not my father,” she hissed. “And neither am I my brothers, slaves to prophecy and foolish dreams. I woke dragons from stone. I freed Slaver’s Bay. And I have conquered the Seven Kingdoms. I have seen enough death.”

The blade slipped away from his skin. 

Daenerys backed away. “I will have your life instead.”

Jaime staggered to his feet, barely able to track Grey Worm and the Dothraki bloodrider crowding closer to the queen as she took her place on the throne once again. He had to focus hard on each step as he descended, eager to be away from her. His head was swimming, his heart pounding, breath ragged. Alive and drunk on sunlight, once again, though the sensation was not so pleasant this time. 

“Jaime?” 

Swimming out of the darkness at the far end of the throne room, he saw Brienne’s fair hair, her pale face tight with fear as she approached.

She had left in full armor, Oathkeeper at her hip. He wanted to warn her to take care, that the queen’s mood was strange today, but she caught sight of the blood on his throat and rushed to him. Her gloved hands ran over him, swiftly feeling for injuries. “What happened?” she asked, her voice a growl. She had eyes for none but her husband, but Jaime heard people all around them. 

“What is the meaning of this, Your Grace?” A voice boomed in the vast space, low and resonant. Unfamiliar. 

Jaime tried to look over his wife’s shoulder to see who spoke, but she was just slightly too tall. He let himself fall into her eyes, so wide and concerned. Her thumb skated across the wound in his neck, and he winced. 

“It’s not deep,” she whispered, visibly relaxing. 

“Show your queen the proper respect, ser,” Grey Worm ordered. 

“I am no ser,” the man answered. “By the grace of the gods, I am Lord Selwyn of Tarth, the Evenstar, come to bend the knee to the new queen.”

Jaime managed to edge around Brienne enough to see her father. He was a large man, broad-shouldered and round-bellied in a way that suggested great strength in his youth. His hair was as fair as Brienne’s, but his close-cropped beard was white. His eyes were not the same radiant blue, but deeper, shading almost to the purple of the Targaryens. Somewhere in Brienne’s line, a dragon had found its way to her island.

Unsullied surrounded them, spears in hand though not pointed at them. Not yet.

Grey Worm stepped forward and spoke the titles Missandei had once announced. Stormborn. Mother of Dragons. Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. Breaker of Chains. Queen of Meereen. Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. He said each with pride, as battles fought and won. 

“Lord Selwyn, I trust you encountered no trouble on your journey,” the queen said pleasantly, ignoring both his question and the dagger in her lap, still smeared with Jaime’s blood.

“Winter storms, nothing I haven’t seen before. I trust you are well, Your Grace.” The courtesies flowed smoothly, but Lord Selwyn was watching the queen like an insect he had not encountered before, beautiful and possibly deadly.

Brienne should be bowing and scraping like her father, but she stood frozen, her hands on Jaime’s arms, unable to look away from him. Finally Jaime had to break her grip so he could turn to face the queen. 

Daenerys nodded. “I am well. Ser Jaime and I were just discussing my conditions for his pardon.”

Pardon? That was not even a whisper in the rumors that swirled about the castle, and Jaime had heard many rumors from the maids and from his brother. Varys and his little birds were back in the queen’s service, though he’d acquired an Unsullied dogging his steps. According to Tyrion, Danaerys had ultimately decided Varys was too valuable to kill, but also too dangerous in anyone else’s hands. 

“Discussing?” Lord Selwyn snorted. “Looks more like you were using him for a pincushion. What conditions might those be?”

“Father,” Brienne whispered urgently, her eyes imploring. 

“Hush, girl. The queen and I understand each other quite well, I think.” Lord Selwyn, for all his isolation on that rock in the Narrow Sea, did seem to navigate the politics of court easily enough.

Daenerys smiled at the man, a wry, amused smile that reminded him how very young she was. How young they were all were, these children playing at lords and queens. “He bends the knee.”

Lord Selwyn nodded, as if these concessions were his to grant, not Jaime’s. “Of course.” 

“You and your daughter bend the knee. She does not swear herself to the service of another House, ever again.” Daenerys laid these out with precision. She’d planned all of this, likely down to Brienne’s timely arrival. 

His wife grumbled at that last point, and Lord Selwyn turned to stare at her. “No oaths to other Houses,” Brienne promised reluctantly. Though her formal service to House Stark was ended, Jaime understood she would always favor the Starks. She had given them near a decade of her life.

“What else?” Lord Selwyn asked brusquely. Daenerys might not realize it yet, but she’d lost this lord’s devotion before she could ever begin to earn it. He would play his part, he would keep his family safe, but no more. He, like his daughter, did not care for game playing when lives were at stake.

The queen’s smile widened. His bluntness must be refreshing after all the bootlicking she’d suffered of late. Then her smile faded, and her gaze went back to Jaime. “Ser Jaime relinquishes any claim on Casterly Rock. He will serve as Lady Brienne’s consort on Tarth when she is the Evenstar. He will not hold the title of lord. His children may not serve as his brother’s heirs.”

Jaime nodded. He did not want the Rock. He wanted only his wife, and a measure of peace somewhere far from this city that had swallowed his family whole. 

“My mercy only extends so far, Lannister. Test me and you will find yourself with the Night’s Watch or amusing my dragon.” She addressed him directly, ignoring the others for the moment.

She turned her attention back to Lord Selwyn. “Ser Jaime will leave King’s Landing immediately following my coronation. He will not return to this city without an invitation from me, but when I do issue an invitation, he will come. Without question, without delay.” 

A tic appeared in Lord Selwyn’s jaw. He didn’t like those requirements much, and neither did Jaime. They would make Lord Selwyn his gaoler, and keep Jaime from his brother. “Understood.”

Daenerys turned her attention on Brienne for the first time. “I would have the lady’s promise as well.”

Brienne looked stricken. “Why would you—” she stuttered.

His wife’s distress snapped Jaime from his daze. “Come now, Brienne. The queen means to exile me, but she may need to trot out her pet lion as both proof of her mercy and a warning to any lords thinking to undermine her.”

Daenerys rose slowly from her throne, her gaze fixed on him. “You did me a service, warning me of the wildfire, killing your sister.” 

 _I saved your life,_ Jaime did not say, _and I did not kill her for you._

“But you killed my father. And I will not spread tales of why. Neither will you. The realm is broken, and I must mend it. Allowing my father’s killer to retake his family’s seat would make me look weak, and that will not serve.” 

The high-handed tone she’d adopted drained from her voice. “I could order your children fostered here. I could send them to Pyke, or to Sunspear. But I grant you their lives as well. This enmity between our families ends here.”

Brienne’s hand slipped into his, and Jaime cast a glance at her. They’d never talked about the possibility of children, _their_ children. Jaime had assumed he wouldn’t live long enough, and Brienne was not so young anymore either. She was still frightened, but the hope in her eyes scared him more. The future she could see, hazy in the distance, could be snatched away from them at any moment, at the queen’s whim. 

“Don’t make me regret this,” the queen said quietly. “Don’t make me into the monster you fear. I could raze Tarth in an afternoon, or I could fly the coast of the Stormlands and burn pirate vessels before they even reach your shores.”

Lord Selwyn’s face flushed in anger. Jaime had never seen Tarth except from the sea, but clearly Lord Selwyn could see his keep in flames, his people burnt to ash, his grandchildren snatched from his halls and sent to foster thousands of leagues away, hostage to their father’s good behavior. “I have known six kings and one ruling queen in my lifetime, girl, and all have come to grief. If you would break that pattern, you might consider slipping the noose from the necks of those who have done nothing to earn your ire.”

Daenerys bristled at that.

“A man who must say, ‘I am the king,’ is no king,” Jaime said quickly, before she could do something rash. 

“What?” Daenerys’s eyes found his, her eyes alight with familiar fury. Cersei had looked thus when thwarted.

“Something my father said when Joffrey sat that chair,” Jaime explained. Tyrion had told him the tale later. “He was right, for once. He spent his whole life showing the realm that he wasn’t weak. He slaughtered those who mocked his father’s soft nature, he made enemies of his friends, and in the end the son he scorned killed him on the privy. Not, perhaps, an example you would wish to follow.” 

Daenerys raised her bejeweled hand to silence him. “I’ve enough Lannisters advising me, I don’t need you as well. Will you bend the knee, or do you intend to vex me until I call for my dragon?” 

Lord Selwyn pulled his sword from its scabbard, and the Unsullied twitched toward him as they gauged his intent. The greatsword was ancient, not Valyrian steel but impressive nonetheless, massive as Ice had been. Slowly Lord Selwyn knelt on the marble floor in his finery, the rose and azure sigil of his House bright against the staid grey of his jerkin and cloak, and laid the blade before him. “I, Lord Selwyn of Tarth, pledge my domain in service of Daenerys Targaryen, first of her name, in the hopes that she will always remember the debt a ruler owes her people, to protect them from all threats, without and within.” 

The Unsullied retreated, their spears held at their sides. 

Brienne’s hand slipped from Jaime’s, and she drew Oathkeeper as well. She sank to her knees, her sword laid upon the floor, its gold and rubies glinting as the rippled steel caught the light. “I fought beside you at Winterfell, Your Grace. I serve the realm.”

Jaime noted her careful phrasing. It sounded more like her father than her. He glanced up at the queen. She didn’t look happy, but then she rarely did. Thoughtful, which would serve for now. 

Brienne turned her wide blue eyes on him, silently begging him to follow their lead. 

Jaime sank to his knees once more. He had no sword to lay at her feet, which gave him perverse pleasure. “I serve my lady wife, Your Grace. You have her sword, so you have mine as well.” 

Brienne swore softly under her breath, and a heavy sigh escaped Selwyn. Best start as he intended to go on. His goodfather would learn swiftly that Jaime cared little for the false flatteries of court life.

Anger flickered across the queen’s lovely features, then settled into annoyance. “Rise. Rise and begone. I do not wish to see Ser Jaime again until the coronation.” 

That suited Jaime as well. He rose and followed his wife and her father from the throne room, correctly anticipating the lecture he was about to receive. 

 

* * *

 

  
That lecture was the first of many. Lord Selwyn did not appreciate Jaime’s humor the way his daughter had learned to. And yet the Evenstar trusted his daughter’s judgement of her husband. The fact that Jaime would never rule his island perhaps softened the blow to Lord Selwyn’s pride, bringing home the infamous Kingslayer as his goodson. 

The coronation was an extravagant farce, Daenerys arriving on Drogon’s back. Prince Jon rode a black stallion into the throne room, and for a moment Jaime saw Ned Stark in Jon’s place. He shivered despite the warmth of the fires and the many nobles packed into the throne room. 

The second window had just been placed, but a sliver of light still shone above the throne where the walls were not yet complete. In the stained glass, picked out in tiny jewel-like shards of glass, Queen Daenerys and Prince Jon soared above the battlefield, fire raining down on their foes. Tiny Dothraki rode across the field, Northmen and Vale men and Unsullied arrayed before the walls of Winterfell. If he squinted, Jaime could just catch a glimpse of Brienne’s fair hair picked out in gold glass in the front ranks of troops. Jorah Mormont would be there as well, among the Dothraki. Jaime did not look for himself. 

The queen was sharp and lovely in her ruby silk gown edged in black Myrish lace and embellished with chips of dragonglass. Her gaze softened when she looked at Jon. Regret and longing for what could not be. Jaime caught her eye for a moment, and the understanding that passed between them hurt. 

But his hand found his wife’s, and a moment later he laughed under his breath at a jest shared between Lord Selwyn and Ser Podrick. The boy would go north again with Lady Sansa, making his lady knight proud and melancholy in equal measure. The ship bound for Tarth would depart on the morning tide. 

Tyrion remained Hand of the King, even more cynical and less trusting than he had been before he killed their father and fled this castle. That would serve him better than blind devotion, Jaime knew better than most. 

When the coronation had concluded, as the lords and ladies moved in a great tide of perfumed and bejeweled nobility to the Great Hall for the feast, Jaime made his way to the Starks. Lady Sansa saw him coming and set off to speak to her cousin. Arya was not with them. She had taken ship without warning anyone, her destination unknown. Her blacksmith lord looked lonely in her absence. 

The boy in the chair seemed to expect him.   

In the thick of the crowd, the tumult around them felt nearly as private as the quiet of the godswood. 

“I thought you said there would be no ‘after’ for me,” Jaime reminded him.

Bran looked up, and the soldier pushing his chair pretended not to hear them. “I asked what made you think there would be an after. I could see only glimpses beyond the battle, and nothing of you.”

“And now?” If the boy saw more death in their future, Jaime did not know what he would do. Most like slip away in the night and leave Brienne as far from his fate as possible. 

“The fate of the Seven Kingdoms no longer rests on my shoulders. As it should be. That is all I need know.” 

Well, that was … infuriating, really. 

Bran glanced at his sister and cousin, standing together by a pillar deep in conversation. “Take your ship, Ser Jaime. Live, and fight, and pray you have no further need to take revenge. I do not think we will meet again.”

Jaime stopped in his tracks, a fat lordling and a small girl walking right into him, causing minor chaos in the flow of nobles leaving the hall. Bran was gone before Jaime had disentangled himself. 

Leaving the city the next morning, Jaime felt less than he’d expected, and more. So many places in King’s Landing held memories, some pleasant and others less so. They rode past the inn in Eel Alley where Cersei had convinced him to join the Kingsguard, and the square where he’d attacked Ned Stark’s men. King’s Square, where their swords lit with wildfire and the queen spared them all her wrath. 

Tyrion accompanied them to the dock, as did Lady Sansa and Ser Podrick. There were hugs and tears and promises to visit, but Jaime did not think that would happen for some time. The realm was still fractured, and neither Tyrion nor Sansa could spare time away from their duties for the foreseeable future. 

When twilight fell, King’s Landing was far behind them, Massey’s Hook a smudge of darkness to the west and open water before their bow. 

Jaime found Brienne on the deck, looking to the west. “What do you see, lady wife?” He wrapped his arms around her, his chin resting on her shoulder.

She pointed, and he saw it, a single bright star in the lavender sky. “The evenstar,” she said. “Guiding sailors back home to Westeros since the age of the First Men.”

“In Lannisport they say that sailors who chase the evenstar never return,” Jaime offered. “They sail west forever, into the setting sun.” He’d always thought it a tragic tale, a warning. His uncle Gerion had sailed east in search of the ancient Lannister sword Brightroar, lost centuries ago in Valyria, and he was never seen again. 

“Perhaps they found what they were looking for, and had no need to return,” Brienne suggested, leaning into her husband’s embrace. 

They watched the sky darken and the stars spill into the night. 

Before they left the Red Keep, Jaime had gone to the White Sword Tower, to return the White Book to its rightful place and record the end of his story in its pages. Cersei’s monstrous guards had not touched the book, and Daenerys might not bother even appointing a Queensguard, but this chapter in history deserved an end. The history of his brothers, the best, the worst, and those who were a bit of both. 

First he’d scratched out the slander against Tyrion that named him Joffrey’s killer. And then, painstakingly slowly, Jaime had completed his page.

_Defeated in the Whispering Wood by the Young Wolf Robb Stark during the War of the Five Kings. Held captive at Riverrun and ransomed for a promise unfulfilled. Captured again by men in service to Roose Bolton, losing his sword hand to Locke, their leader. Returned safely to King's Landing by Brienne, the Maid of Tarth._  
_Failed to protect kings Joffrey I and Tommen I. Led a failed rescue mission to retrieve Princess Myrcella from Dorne. Released from the Kingsguard._  
_As commander of the crown’s forces, re-took Riverrun from the Tully rebels without battle. Abandoned his ancestral home in aid of a greater strategy, capturing Highgarden for Queen Cersei I._  
_Went north alone to fight for the living in the Battle of Winterfell. Knighted Ser Brienne of Tarth before the battle, and wed her after it. Returned south and fought beside the conquering forces to prevent the burning of wildfire in the Battle of King’s Landing. Granted Queen Cersei mercy in her final moments._

The page had been nearly full then, only a single line of space remaining. 

_Retired to Tarth as consort to the next Evenstar._

Jaime had waited until the ink dried, and closed the book. The man who'd worn the white cloak, who’d witnessed and embraced the corruption of the vows the brothers had sworn, was dead and gone. 

The man who sailed away from King’s Landing was content to follow his Evenstar across the waves, never to return. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An end, far sweeter than the one made for TV, and likely sweeter than GRRM's vision. Let me know what you thought, please. This story has consumed many of my waking hours the last 2.5 months. 
> 
> Thanks in particular to my regular commenters, who kept me motivated to update frequently and keep this story going.


End file.
